A Research On Modern And Contemporary Essays Selected For Chinese Teaching In Vocational Schools

The education structure is witnessing profound changes and the society’s requirements forthe quality of worker are increasing constantly as the economy develops and industrialstructure readjusts in China. As a result, students in vocational schools are required to havenot only a high command of technical skills but also a high humanistic quality and thecompetence to study continuously and develop during their whole lives. This makes theteaching of Chinese, a basic course in the education, very important. However, thedevelopment and research work for Chinese teaching material in vocational schools lagsbehind the general education and lacks systematic and characteristic development.There are a lot of rooms for the improvement of research works for Chinese teachingmaterial in vocational schools. Reading material selection, as the core of Chinese readingmaterial, plays a vital role in teaching. This paper attempts to conduct a research on theselection of modern and contemporary essays, an important part of Chinese literature and themost suitable material to be selected, in Chinese teaching material for their diversifiedcontents, beautiful words and sentences. These terse and forceful essays, different from thosecumbersome articles and those hard and unreadable classical Chinese essays, are very suitablefor vocational school students to learn and understand.The author of this paper conducted a questionnaire about the essay-learning condition ofstudents in vocational schools and analyzed the modern and contemporary essays selected byChinese textbooks used by vocational schools according to various categories. The merits andshortcomings of various textbooks in selecting essays of different authors, style, quality andquantity are compared and analyzed to provide reference and basis for better essay teaching.On the basis of comprehensive analysis and students questionnaires, a suggestion is made onthe current problems facing material selection of Chinese textbooks: selection of essays shallbe diversified and targeted at vocational school students of different specialties. The textbookmaterial shall be readable, classic and close to technical school students and their lives so asto construct a humanistic system with the professional spirit as the core. Some attempts canbe made to adjust the proportion of modern and contemporary essays in the overall selectedmaterial and provide extensive reading material. As a matter of fact, the compilation oftextbook is a huge and difficult work to do and the author of this paper can only, based on the accumulated experience and the real condition of students, try to understand the merits andshortcomings of the textbook and make the best use of their merits while getting rid of theshortcomings so as to enable Chinese teaching to play a more important role in the training ofhigh-quality technicians. The author of this paper hopes that the modern and contemporaryessays can give full play to their charm and lay a sound foundation for the professionaldevelopment of students in vocational schools.