On Creative Reading

Reading, an activity of collecting information as well as a way of textual acceptancewith purpose and consciousness, is a most essential approach to cognition of objects,command of natural and social laws, development of thoughts and aestheticexperience, establishment of life goals and acquisition of existing skills. In this sense,it can be regarded as a senior indispensable way of life for human beings. Thereby,reading has ever since held a significant position in language and literature teaching,during the course of which the research of reading teaching has become a subject formuch concern, especially to the modern language and literature teachingmethodology.This academic thesis mainly concentrates on a comparatively avant-guardmethodology----Creation Reading, covering its general laws, features, relationshipand application to middle school language and literature teaching. There are threemajor parts presented as follows:First of all, the theoretical connotation, basis and features of Creation Reading aredealt with in this part. In nature, Creation Reading falls into the category of readerontology: it goes far further for readers to awaken to, experience, penetrate andcomprehend a spiritual world of the writer by medium means of the writings, whichcan live up to an emotional collision between the writer and the reader, an embraceand dialogue of two souls, a mutual interpretation, correspondence and constructionbetween the reader and the readings as well, instead of stopping over at the point ofonly searching for or even understanding of the ideological theme, thorough analysisof the structure and artistic techniques;it takes place in the course of literary activity,not beyond that, and without readers' involvement, there will be no realization ofrich connotation of the texts. The theoretical sources of Creation Reading derive fromvarious philosophical, aesthetical and literature criticism positions, concepts andmethods of the western Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Structuralism,Deconstructionism, New Criticism and Formalism, etc, in the early 20th century, whilethe acceptance theory evolving from Germany in the sixties and seventies is its directtheoretical basis. The "recalling " nature in text itself and initiative participation of thereaders themselves compose the basic characteristics of Creation Reading.In the second part is mainly expounded the relationships between CreationReading and middle school language and literature teaching. Laws of reading teachingdeserves much research by the way of comparing the advantages and disadvantagesamong a variety of schools representative of different reading teaching practice: thetraditional reading teaching focuses on knowledge impartation and transmission,overstating the authoritativeness of the teacher and the text, more teaching thanlearning, easily leading to the result that the rational overwhelm the perceptual,theories replace practices and results overweight the process;the teaching concepts of"Text Supreme" school seeks an exhaustive "detailed reading", including the searchfor original textual meanings together with the implication, which are merelyexcavated and extracted from the text proper, as a result, cutting down students'initiative on independent thinking;on the contrary, the teaching concepts of "ReaderSupreme" school, ignoring the original textual meanings, assert that every readingequals misreading, with the consequence of loss of objective standards. However,beyond the disadvantages above, Creation Reading attaches equal importance to themajor two subjects-----the teacher and the student with the operating mechanismunder which reading and understanding of the student is realized in the assistance ofthe teacher's during the course of teaching and learning. A thorough presentation isthen offered about the profound significance and abundant connotation of twosubjects.In the final part are involved the practicing strategies from point of view ofmethodology. Since the fundamental object of education is to mold good personalityand cultivate qualified personnel, starting and ending up both with theeducates----students, establishment of an individual-based concept of educating andteaching is the principal perquisite, embodied during the process of teaching andlearning in the form of being student-centered, whereby realization of students'subjectivity should be a premise to the teachers' subjectivity. Therefore, to create afree, democratic and harmonious environment, build an open and flexible classroomoperating mechanism, construct an interactive teaching platform, arouse and activateinnovative initiatives is an important condition and basic assurance of realization ofCreation Reading teaching goals. In the light of the generative principles of CreationReading, this part also gives priority to two interrelated points of methodology withunique connotations, generalized into "recalling system" of texts and "meaningdivergence" of reading, ambiguous "textual situation" and intuitive "purportconstruction". It is advocated that in Creation Reading teaching, teachers should seeto it that they have a deep understanding and accurate grasp of "recalling " features oftexts and "ambiguous " situation, so that they can guide the students into a uniquedialogue with the textual world, evoking intelligence, imagination and creativecomprehension and construction.