Research On The Teaching Of Etymology In Primary Schools From The Perspective Of Educatio

As one of the essences of Chinese traditional culture,Weiyu has an imperceptible influence on modern and contemporary social development in China.To investigate etymology-based Chinese literacy teaching in elementary schools from the perspective of Weiyu,Chinese literacy teaching based on etymology in elementary schools is built on profound theories of Chinese traditional culture on one hand;and on the other hand,theoretical values of Weiyu which is an essence of such traditional culture are stressed by clarifying the guidance of Weiyu on teaching practice.According to the concept of Weiyu,human beings and all things are in co-existence on earth;and human beings help nature develop and nourish the universe.All these ideas are embodied in the culture in which Chinese characters serve as the carriers.Some of them are even directly reflected in Chinese symbols.Especially,life first,harmony,following a middle course,seeking truth from facts and other thoughts of Weiyu all play a guiding role in underlying issues of education activities.Under the guidance of Weiyu,etymology-based Chinese literacy teaching in elementary schools inherits,transforms and innovates the Chinese traditional culture.Besides,Weiyu as the excellent Chinese traditional culture is also carried forward,transformed and applied in teaching practice."Wei" is the regulation of the environment to the individual,is the order of the individual.This kind of order includes the stipulation of the invisible cultural tradition,natural environment and real social environment in life.The goal of "education" is to the individual,the individual is the cause and motivation of education,and the fundamental role of education is to promote the development of the individual and promote the realization of the individual.The education of the individual is full of the dialectical relationship between the individual and the society.In education,it is necessary to cultivate students’ personality as well as their commonality.Personality refers to the individual characteristics different from everyone,and commonness is the social nature shared by everyone.The realization ofindividual "location",that is,the individual obtains negative adaptability(adaptability)and positive creativity(personality)to interact with the natural environment and social environment.Cultural inheritance is an important part of education to cultivate students’ commonality.The inheritance of culture lies in understanding the continuity and development of culture.Chinese characters are important tools for cultural learning.Chinese character source is one of the forms in the development of Chinese characters.It can help students understand the relationship between form and meaning of Chinese characters,and is also an important carrier to understand Chinese culture.The Chinese character "near to take all bodies,far away to take things","all bodies" and "all things" are the order that the individual is familiar with and around the individual,which meets the cognitive ability requirements of primary school students.It can also be said that when primary school students learn Chinese characters,they are not only learning a unified symbol,but also learning a way to name "all bodies" and "all things",so the situation in the source of Chinese characters has a natural common potential.The application of Chinese character source in teaching can give consideration to the cultivation of students’ commonness and personality.Chinese characters are important cultural symbols and they comprise three levels,that is formal knowledge,factual knowledge and valuable knowledge.More particularly,formal knowledge of Chinese characters finds expression in their function of communication,primarily including symbolic knowledge that combines patterns,sounds and meanings of Chinese characters together.Regarding factual knowledge,it is reflected in the mirror function of Chinese characters,such as manifestations of the nation’s evolutionary history,agricultural culture,patriarchal systems,lifestyle and customs and way ofthinking.Lastly,valuable knowledge of Chinese characters incorporates all kinds of thoughts(e.g.,the unity of Man and Nature,benevolence,righteousness,propriety,wisdom and faith),the aesthetic way and the emotional attitudes implied in them.Elementary school students learn Chinese characters in Chinese teaching classes.The application of etymology in the literacy teaching practice of elementary schools has its practical needs and the needs are attributed to both our understanding and the development of literal meanings of Chinese characters.Teachers strive to overcome difficulties in realizing the dominant value of Chinese characters by virtue oftheir implicit values.However,such implicit values differ from forms of modern knowledge to some extent.Implicit knowledge of Chinese characters is unable to produce uniform standards that are solidified by concepts.As a consequence,the “secularization” of implicit knowledge occurs in the process of solving the above problem.It becomes inclined to fabricate the implicit knowledge of Chinese characters at will.Some people even add“charms” to or reduce “charms” in the cultural contents of Chinese characters.In comparison,etymology-based cultural tracing for Chinese characters may guide us to seek the ins and outs of culture.Additionally,implicit cultural values of Chinese characters become more prominent in such an era when cultural self-consciousness and cultural confidence are increasingly important.In education,implicit values place more in-depth and more comprehensive influences on people.Considering that culture embodied in literal meanings of Chinese characters has a large time span,their cultural connotations can be both vivid and profound.Sources of Chinese characters can be seen as respective image schemas that depict objects or express humanity,emotions and rationality.In addition to tracing the origins of culture in Chinese characters,image schemas can be also used to interpret culture.Without a doubt,Chinese etymology is of great value in the teaching of Chinese characters.When Chinese etymology is applied in literacy teaching classes in elementary schools,there exist the following contradictions:(1)Lack of cognitive experience of elementary school students against profound culture in Chinese etymology;(2)stroke writing details of standardized Chinese characters against roughness of Chinese etymology;(3)derivative meanings of Chinese characters during decentralized literacy activities against their primary meanings in etymology;and(4)the need of students to learn about culture in Chinese characters against their inability of cultural practice.Under the circumstance that the above problems are explored from the perspective of Weiyu,it is found that Weiyu for individuals has three dimensions:(1)a combination ofpersonality and universality;(2)a combination of science and humanity;and(3)a combination of inheritance and evolution.Focusing on the above three combinations,education is peopleoriented.Therefore,the experience and physical and mental development of students should be the basis ofeducation.Social culture is the basic solution for students to acquire universality,signifying that they need to learn the culture of Chinese characters.The goal of learning culture implied in Chinese characters is to inherit and develop the culture.Moreover,Chinese character culture learning is procedural.Thus,Weiyu for individuals can be implemented in a student-centered way by selecting image schemas of Chinese character etymological symbols as the media,and Chinese symbols and cultural cores as the content to carryout etymology-based Chinese literacy teaching in elementary schools.In this process,image schemas play an intermediary role in interpreting the relationship between the living situation where the students gain experience and the standardized Chinese character meaning.As a result,not only are the basic meanings of Chinese characters explained,which facilitates the inheritance oftheir cultural matrix,but texts in Chinese teaching textbooks are integrated to promote the transformation and application of cultural essences in Chinese characters.Here,we adopted the schema theory to analyze a mechanism of promoting cultural matrix inheritance by etymological teaching.According to this theory,Chinese character learning during literacy teaching is divided into two scenarios.One is an increase in the number of new Chinese characters learned and the other is implicit meaning learning deepening of individual Chinese characters.In the process of interaction activities,elementary school students may gain phonetic and semantic knowledge;and such knowledge remains consistent with phonetic and semantic correspondence(i.e.,stimuli obtained in classes)of new Chinese characters that they learn.This signifies that the learning of elementary school students undergoes a process of assimilation.Conflicts between sounds and meanings that the students newly learn and their previous experience result in an adaptation process,so that a new schema can be established.Moreover,this is the most common adaptation during literacy teaching of Chinese characters,contributing to increasing the number of new Chinese characters learned.Besides,there also exists adaptive learning of morphemes of a single Chinese character.Morphemes of a Chinese character relate to but also differ from its basic meanings.For this reason,learning morphemes of a Chinese character also falls into the category of adaptive learning.Under the circumstance that morphemes of a Chinese character contain a consistent cultural matrix of Chinese culture.By grasping multiple morphemes of Chinese characters,students are able to memorize cultural phenomena and comprehend cultural connotations with the help of a cultural matrix.Alternative performance of the above two adaptive learning modes during Chinese character learning not only ensures the growth ofthe number ofnew Chinese characters learned,but also improves the quality of Chinese character learning.Component image schemas in an etymological Chinese character and compound image schemas in a Chinese character composed oftwo or more single characters specify spatio-temporally or in nature the scenario where the students gain experience so that Chinese symbols can be meaningfully connected with the experience.Life situations where students gain experience are in more diversified forms,such as terms,sentences,images,pictures,videos,textbooks and extra-curricular activities.In this study,it is demonstrated in statistics ofthree quasi-experiments that two situations of pictures and sentences,together with etymological image schemas,can all assist students in reinforcing their morphological awareness during etymology-based Chinese character learning.Etymologically,knowledge and cultural learning effects can be improved among students.In this way,knowledge transformation is embodied in specific processes.Text integration realized through etymological image schemas of Chinese characters provides a material carrier for enhancing students’ thinking abilities during text reading and their comprehension of Chinese traditional culture implied in Chinese characters.The text collation mechanism of etymological Chinese characters is attributed to the integrity of their image schemas.Thanks to such integrity,etymological Chinese characters serve as narrative carriers that break spatial and temporal limitations and stipulate the common quality in different texts in the form of themes.During progressive text comprehension producing different concrete experiences,students may comprehend the same theme at diverse levels and from all sides.In the process of repetition,a cultural matrix that uses etymological Chinese symbols as its carrier turns into the life experience of students,thus boosting their cultural confidence and cultural self-consciousness.A certain side ofmany excellent Chinese traditional cultures tends to become increasingly narrower in meaning due to praises.In the course of evolvement,their merits gradually become drawbacks.It is rather embarrassing,because we are still reluctant to abandon them,while they are not really usable if we keep them.Therefore,we need to pursue hierarchies and comprehensiveness at the time of interpreting etymological Chinese characters from the perspective of image schemas.Overall,cultural inheritance which is a rather broad subject is explored hereby virtue of Chinese characters from the perspective of Weiyu,and uses the image schema of Chinese character source to reveal the relationship between the meaning of Chinese characters,the relationship between the morphemes inside Chinese characters,and the relationship between the specific experience of different texts and culture.The learning of the morphemes in Chinese characters focuses on the learning of Chinese symbol knowledge,that is,learning the relationship between the phonetic meanings of Chinese characters and recognizing the multi-morphemes of Chinese characters.The teaching of Chinese character source focuses on the application in the context of "ci".The study of Chinese excellent culture in Chinese characters focuses on the use of word sources in different text contexts to form value judgment and value selection of traditional Chinese culture,and to sort out and recognize the combination of advanced socialist culture,revolutionary culture and excellent traditional Chinese culture.The vividness of the image schema in the Chinese character source contributes to the generation of the semioticsituation,and the richness and hierarchy ofthesemiotic situation are transformed into the experience for teachers and students to understand the Chinese character meaning and culture,and promote students to generate Chinese character knowledge and cultural cognition independently.