Study On The Teaching Of Modern Literary Chinese

Starting from a survey of Chinese teaching in the secondary schools, along with an analysis on theuse of modern literary Chinese in the publications, this paper studies the teaching of the modern literaryChinese, and also focuses on the proficiency construction of modern literary Chinese among themembers of society. The learning theory of constructivism furnishes the theoretical basis for this study.The process of the study includes four aspects. That is, first, the literature on Chinese teaching is readextensively. Secondly, the Chinese curriculum standards and the Chinese teaching materials forsecondary schools are ploughed through thoroughly. Thirdly, the present situations of Chinese teachingand learning in secondary schools are surveyed overall. Fourthly, the use of modern literary Chinese inthe society is examined closely. The investigation on the present situations of modern Chinese teachingin secondary schools is started from the students’ compositions. More than three hundred compositions,photocopies of the manuscripts, are collected from different grades in seven secondary schools. Thesecompositions have been read repeatedly and examined closely in order to evaluate the achievements andfind out the existing problems in literary Chinese teaching, and to further explore the process and thelaws of proficiency construction of modern literary Chinese.The paper falls into five chapters, which can be further divided into three parts according to thehighlights of the study.The first part, including the first chapter, is an introduction to the literary language and how to gainproficiency in it.Chapter One first defines the literary language. According to Chen Jianmin(1984), the crucialperiod for a person to master the colloquial Chinese in the main and begin to learn the literary Chinesesystematically, is fixed at the stage of the secondary education. The paper expounds the formation andevolution of the modern literary Chinese, especially elaborating on its lexical, grammatical andrhetorical features.It also sketches the learning theory of constructivism, and then applies it to presenting theformation and evolution of a person’s modern literary Chinese proficiency. The stage ofsecondary-school is the phase when a person studies the modern literary Chinese systematically, andtherefore, the post-secondary-school stage is the phase for them to gain proficiency in literary Chinesecontinually. A person has to make painstaking efforts to master the modern literary Chinese. Ifcompared with the learning of colloquial language, the learning of literary language calls for more efforts and devotion.The second part, which consists of Chapter Two and Chapter Three, elaborates on the research onontological teaching of modern literary Chinese.Chapter Two concerns the lexical teaching of modern literary Chinese.The paper discusses the history, the present situation, and the teaching effects of the lexicalteaching, as well as the perspectives on how to improve the lexical teaching. It also analyzes the lexicalusages in the society, and emphasizes that social members should have more intensive vocabulary studyand pay more attention to the norms of vocabulary.It also reviews the glossaries of common vocabulary in the Chinese textbooks published by JiangsuEducation Publishing House, and affirms the practice of compiling a glossary at the end of eachtextbook and its achievements in directing the students to build up their vocabulary. On the other hand,the paper demonstrates the defects in the glossaries, and hence poses several pervasive questions andputs forward its perceptions on the lexical teaching. For instance, some words in the classics areoutdated, or bearing the author’s personal style, or not in accord with the present usages, so it is notnecessary to ask the students to learn them. The people who compile the glossaries should improve theirtheoretical level of Chinese language. And there must be precise standards for the choice of vocabularyand overall arrangements while the glossaries are compiled.The paper singles out120compositions of12groups of students from different grades anddifferent schools in order to accurately evaluate the effect of their vocabulary learning. First, the wordsin each composition are sorted out. Secondly, according to different groups, the ratio of the number ofwords without repetition to the total number of words in the compositions has been calculated. What’smore, in each group, the words are sorted again into different lexical categories in order to observe thechanges in the vocabulary the students have employed. Then, a parallel comparison of the quantity andquality of the vocabulary employed between different groups is carried out. This time-consuming andlaborious analysis reveals that when the students are promoted to a higher grade, they improve theirvocabulary gradually and employ more proper and more relatively abstract words, and their cognitiveabilities and their abstract thinking abilities have been enhanced accordingly. The observation on thevocabulary employed in the students’ compositions is of great significance to the studies on thedevelopment of a person’s cognitive ability and his vocabulary learning.Chapter Three deals with the grammatical teaching.It depicts the history and the present situation of grammatical teaching in secondary schools,evaluates grammatical teaching effects on the basis of the use of language in the collected compositions,and discusses the usages of grammar among the media people and civil servants.Based on the observation of the use of language in students’ compositions, the paper describes thegradual enhancement of their grammar sense and their competence in the use the functional words andin the sentence organization. It can be discovered in the compositions that the junior students are able touse some common functional words and sentence structures, while the senior students employ the functional words with more literary flavor and more complicated sentence structures, and that the highergrade the students are, the more sophisticated mistakes they can avoid. All these phenomena representthe improvement of students’ grammatical abilities.The paper dissects the manifestations and results of the proposition of weakening the grammaticalteaching. For years the problems of “what to teach” and “how to teach” in the grammatical teachinghaven’t been settled properly, which are the main reasons for this proposition. However, some vaguestatements also give rise to this proposition and back it up. The paper refutes the assertions that there isa strong flavor of parataxis in the combinations of Chinese sentences, and that the combinations ofwords are extremely flexible. It goes on to analyze the structures capable of different interpretations,such as “chǎoròusī” and “kāidāode”, and asserts that those vague statements must be clarified.Therefore, it is about time to carry out the grammatical teaching, and to face squarely some specificproblems in it and to tackle them appropriately.The third part, which is made up of two chapters, looks at the study on the teaching of applicationabilities of modern literary Chinese.Chapter Four centers on the teaching of writing.The literary writing ability consists in the writing skills and the mastery of the language. It alsoembodies a person’s rich life experience and his high ideological level, as well as his exceptionalabilities to observe, analyze and synthesize. The writing ability is a comprehensive reflection of a wholevariety of a person’s abilities, and a vivid expression of the teaching results of Chinese, which is anintegration of humanity into instrumentality.The paper compares several sets of Chinese textbooks for secondary schools, and analyzes thevirtues and defects of their guidance in the teaching of writing.The analysis of the collected compositions reveals that the writing trainings in junior and seniormiddle schools are effective. The middle school students have gained a better grasp of Chinese language,and acquired the skills in narrating, describing, explaining, arguing and expressing. Their writingabilities have been enhanced gradually in terms of examining the subject of the composition,establishing the gist of the composition and mapping out a piece of writing, arranging the layout of thecomposition, selecting and adjusting the source materials, etc.At present, the prominent problem of the writing teaching in secondary schools is the phenomenonthat in order to help the students to achieve desirable scores in the entrance examinations, the teacherstake great pains to try to figure out the composition topics in the entrance examinations, and get thestudents prepared for those topics. Maybe this practice achieves some immediate effect in inspiring thestudents and improving their writing skills with the approach of the examinations, but the fact remainsthat on the whole, it distorts the teaching of writing to some extent, and brings some drawbacks to it.After the graduation from the secondary schools, a person still needs to enhance his writing ability.Combined with the profession the author is engaged in, the paper also discusses the literary languageproblems in translations from English into Chinese. Chapter Five explores the teaching of reading.The paper gives a brief historical overview of the teaching of reading, and analyzes its presentsituation. The traditional Chinese teaching used to focus on reading and reciting, while reading is still animportant part in modern Chinese teaching. In reading, exposed to numerous literary works anddifferent thoughts and cultures, the students not only build up their vocabulary, acquire the languagesense, and have a better command of grammar, but also form the writing style on good models andappreciate the personalized writing style of masters. The paper also investigates the relationshipbetween the reading and the source materials for writing. Among all the collected compositions,288ones are singled out for the source materials employed in them. These source materials employed areextracted for a survey on their origins in reading, and the findings show that generally speaking, thereading effects of senior students are superior to those of junior students, and the reading effects of thestudents from the relatively developed regions are better. For example,35percent of the sourcematerials in Shanghai students’ compositions originate from the textbooks,65percent of them fromoutside reading.56percent of the source materials in the compositions of students from six differentschools in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces derive from the textbooks,44percent of them from theoutside reading. The investigation on the origins of source materials in the students’ compositionsindicates that nowadays the students only read the textbooks and the reference materials, and have littleoutside reading. Actually, not only the students but also the social members should increase theirreading.The paper also compares “the method of essay in the teaching of reading” with “the method ofresearch in the teaching of reading”, and confirms that the two teaching methods of reading are mutuallycomplementary. The subjective experiences obtained from reading the same text may vary from personto person, and the reading strategies and effects of different texts may differ from each other. However,accurate understanding of the text is the premise of reading. Thus great attention must be paid to makingthe students capable of reading different types of texts.Different social members may have their personal preference and demands in reading, but in termsof enhancing the quality of the Chinese nation, the paper advocates reading the classics, the original, thewhole texts, and the whole books, and eliminating the shallow and broken readings which are now inexistence to a certain extent.The last part is the conclusion. It outlines the situations, discovered in the students’ compositions,in every aspect of literary Chinese teaching. It also expounds the existing problems in Chinese teaching,and proposes a couple of suggestions on how to address them. Then, it elaborates on the consequencesof the proficiency construction of modern literary Chinese. On the one hand, the students gradually gaintheir proficiency in modern literary Chinese, and have made tangible improvements. On the other hand,this normal constructing process has been distorted to a certain degree. The individual discrepancies ofsocial members will decidedly result in their different levels of proficiency in literary language. Finally,it suggests that an ideal study on the teaching of modern literary Chinese should be carried out by a bigger team of researchers, within a wider scope, and for a longer period.The study on the teaching of modern literary Chinese, or the study on the proficiency constructionof modern literary Chinese, is a grand project. The breadth and depth of this study are limited and itawaits further study. It also awaits the breakthroughs made by the experts in Chinese teaching andlinguistics.