How to teach literacy in primary school Chinese
"Teaching is for not teaching", the famous saying of Mr. Ye Shengtao, has long been widely read. To achieve the goal of "not teaching", what to "teach" is a core issue.
It is only the most basic task of literacy teaching to complete the amount of literacy specified in each year. In a person’s long study life, there will always be unfamiliar words. What should I do at this time? Therefore, the textbook arrangement should not simply aim at the result of learning-knowing Chinese characters, but should pay more attention to "teaching people to fish" while "teaching people to fish".
The following are some "passwords" for improving students’ autonomous literacy, which are suggested by the unified textbooks. They are also the key points for teachers to use textbooks for teaching, but they must be kept away:
Password 1: Pinyin and Illustration
Pinyin is an important tool for students’ autonomous literacy in the initial stage when their literacy is insufficient.
Unified primary school Chinese textbooks accurately locate the learning function of pinyin, emphasize the tool value of pinyin, arrange Chinese pinyin in the first volume of grade one, arrange the learning content with the rule of pinyin learning as the main clue, and solve the problems in a short time. After that, teachers can lead students through after-class exercises and the column of "Use of Words and Expressions" in the Chinese Garden, and constantly review and consolidate them in the follow-up textbooks.
In order to enable students to master Pinyin firmly, from the first volume of the first grade to the first volume of the second grade, except for some special texts, all the textbooks adopt the method of full-text phonetic notation, while the aid system adopts the method of phonetic notation for difficult words to guide students to understand Chinese characters with Pinyin.
Illustration is also an important resource for students’ autonomous literacy. "Reading with the help of pictures in reading materials" is an important task in the teaching of low-level reading. Texts in the lower years of primary school Chinese textbooks are generally accompanied by vivid illustrations, and teachers can develop students’ reading ability and guide them to read independently through illustrations.
Teachers can make full use of a brand-new text form created by the textbook from the first volume of grade one-comic book text. The pictures and words in the text are closely matched, and there are two or three sentences under each picture, which is similar to common comic books. The text is no longer full-text phonetic notation, but only a few difficult words are phonetic notation. "Difficult words" refer to new words that are not required to be read and words that are required to be read but students cannot guess.
For example, in the lesson "Little Snail", students can’t guess the words "live, children", so they still help students to read by means of phonetic notation.
Comic book texts are no different from other full-text phonetic texts in terms of learning requirements: they are also responsible for reading and writing, reading the text, understanding the content of the text, and accumulating words and phrases. However, because it is only difficult to pronounce words, it increases the difficulty of learning, and students must rely on other clues to guess and read new words.
Through the study of comic books, students feel that they can learn to read independently with or without pinyin. There are many ways to learn to read independently, which lays the foundation for the development of students’ autonomous literacy ability in the future.
Password 2: the law of word formation of Chinese characters
In the face of unfamiliar words, the less external force a person uses, the stronger his literacy ability. For example, without consulting others, using pinyin, using context and life experience, and using reference books, we can guess the general meaning of the word only by its own word-formation characteristics, which should be the core and key ability of autonomous literacy. The law of word formation of Chinese characters is the basis of this ability. The more fully and deeply students know the law of word formation of Chinese characters, the stronger their ability of independent literacy.
The unified primary school Chinese textbooks pay special attention to the teaching of the knowledge of Chinese character formation rules, and teachers should emphasize this point in teaching. For example, the arrangement of literacy classes attaches importance to word literacy. For example, the first volume of grade one, Sun Moon Fire and Water, uses pictographs to read, and Sun Moon Ming uses knowing words to read; The second volume of grade one, Little Green Frog, Word Puzzle, Song of Animals and Children, On the Operating Field, and the first volume of grade two, Song of Trees, use pictophonetic characters to guide students to discover the word-formation rules of pictographic, knowing and pictophonetic Chinese characters, understand the organic relationship between their sounds, shapes and meanings, and feel the charm of Chinese characters.
In addition to the arrangement of literacy classes, we can constantly strengthen the rules of word formation of Chinese characters through the column "My Discovery", so that students’ understanding of Chinese characters can be improved from perceptual to rational, and a systematic understanding of the rules of word formation of Chinese characters can be formed.
On the basis of building students’ understanding of the rules of Chinese character formation, they can cooperate with the teaching materials and begin to actively guide students to read independently. For example, the exercise design of the second volume of the second grade "Chinese Garden 7".
It can be found that the textbooks deliberately present words that students don’t know, and guide students to mobilize their knowledge reserves and think about how to guess and read these unknown words. With the help of the word-formation rules of pictophonetic characters, students know that the meanings expressed by these words should be related to sound through the common radicals-the words beside the mouth, and the right half of these words are all words that students have learned, so they are likely to prompt the pronunciation of these words as phonetic radicals. According to this clue, students can guess not only the meaning but also the pronunciation of new words. Combined with sentences, they can also guess the specific context in which these words are used.
Another example is the arrangement of "Literacy Gas Station" in the second volume of "Chinese Garden Five" in grade two.
It is also an unknown word. In the above question, students can still judge the meaning of new words with the help of the law of word formation by the form and meaning.
In this way, in the face of unfamiliar characters, students can boldly guess and read with the help of basic knowledge of the rules of Chinese character formation. With the deepening of students’ understanding of the rules of Chinese character formation, their ability to read independently will be stronger. The sense of accomplishment brought by the successful experience in learning will further arouse their enthusiasm for literacy and enable them to read independently more actively.
Password 3: Context and Life
When it is difficult to guess the meaning of a word by its word-formation characteristics, it is also an important method to put the word or word in context or use life experience to understand it.
Lv Shuxiang, a famous linguist, believes that words should be embedded in the context to have life, easy to remember and know usage. Context provides many clues to understand this word and word. Teachers should attach importance to the use of teaching materials and guide students to understand the meaning of new words and words by using context. For example, Unit 3 of the second volume of Grade One and Unit 4 of the first volume of Grade Two take "understanding the meaning of words in context" as the language element of the unit, and let students learn this important method through the demonstration and guidance of their learning partners. For example, The Tree and the Magpie, the next volume of the first grade, requires students to understand the meaning of "loneliness" through the first paragraph of the text; The first volume of the second grade "Grape Valley" guides students to contact the above to understand the meaning of "colorful"; "Dayu Harnessing Water" guides students to guess the meaning of "flooding" by referring to statements such as "Flooding the fields and destroying the houses". Wait a minute.
In addition, we should also pay attention to guiding students to guess the meaning of words or words by using life experience. For example, the word "steep" in the first volume of the second grade "Huangshan Strange Stone" simply means that "the mountain slope is very large, straight up and down", which is difficult for the second grade students to understand. But if we start with students’ life experience, let them think about the mountains they have climbed, and arouse the images and emotional experiences related to steepness in students’ minds, students can have an epiphany and guess the general meaning of this new word.
In addition to the guidance of the text, teachers can also strengthen the awareness of understanding the meaning of words in connection with the context and life experience from the after-class exercises and the column "Use of Words and Expressions" in the Chinese garden, and guide students to use this method to guess and read new words and words continuously.
For example, the exercise design of the first volume of the second grade "Chinese Garden IV":
Using the rules of word formation of Chinese characters and guessing the meaning of words and words by using the context and life experience broadens the ways of students’ autonomous literacy, and students’ autonomous literacy ability can be further developed.
Password 4: reference book
Dictionaries are the most basic reference books for students. The unified Chinese textbooks for primary schools attach great importance to the use of reference books, and set up dictionary-looking columns in Chinese Garden III, the second volume of Grade One, and Chinese Garden II, the first volume of Grade Two, respectively, to guide students to learn to use word order search and radical search to find unknown words. The textbook not only introduces the search essentials of these two methods in detail, but also closely combines learning with application, guiding students to use dictionary search to find unfamiliar words and solve problems encountered in reading.
In order to make students skillfully use reference books, the textbook arranges consolidation exercises in dictionary lookup from many angles. For example, the dictionary practice of "who is the fastest" in the second volume of Chinese Garden V in Grade One aims to improve the speed of students looking up new words in the dictionary with phonetic order; The first volume of the second grade cultivates students’ consciousness of "when encountering unfamiliar words, guess first, and then check the dictionary for verification". For example, the exercise design of the lesson "Dayu Water Control".
In order to improve students’ ability to find new words by radical search, the textbook also carries out special exercises for some new words that are difficult to find.
For example, the first volume of the second grade "Chinese Garden 7" is about the search practice of independent characters.
Find out the following words by radical search and fill them in again.
Dictionaries are silent teachers. When students have the ability to look up dictionaries, literacy can enter a more autonomous and independent state, which is a leap in students’ autonomous literacy. At this point, the first volume of grade two arranges the text "Paper Boat and Kite" and "Wind Doll" without phonetic notation, guiding students to guess and read new words by using the methods they have learned comprehensively. For example, the exercise design of the lesson "Paper Boat and Kite".
Students can still guess and read the new words and words with "kite, squirrel, catch, wish you happiness, willingness and crying" by means of illustrations, context, existing life experience and the rules of word formation of pictophonetic characters. Different from the first grade, some new words that can’t be guessed with the help of existing knowledge and experience, such as the word "cry", can be recognized by students by looking up the dictionary. In other words, from this stage on, students have mastered a comprehensive method of autonomous literacy and formed a certain ability of autonomous literacy.
(The author of this article is JUNG WOO, senior editor of the primary school Chinese editing room of People’s Education Publishing House.)
