The Basis Of Deciding What To Teach In Contemporary Literature Reading Education In Middle Schools

It has been more than a decade since the Chinese language curriculum reformtogether with the teaching reform was put into practice at the end of the20thcentury, when it has also been a decade since the trial version of <Chinese LanguageCurriculum Standards> was issued and <Chinese Language Curriculum Standards ofCompulsory Education>(2011) has been promulgated and carried out as well. In thepast ten-plus years, the discussion over ‘how to teach’ has been altered to ‘what toteach’, which is the progress of persistent improvement and summing up of pastpractice in Chinese language teaching.Certain texts in Chinese language textbooks for middle schools in Shanghai haveexperienced adjustments as well as additions and deletions several times, and thetextbooks are still titled to be ‘Trial Version’. In other words, we are in the process ofexploration about which certain texts should be best fit to present the content ofChinese language curriculum. There is always debate over ‘what to teach’ in theprocess of teaching contemporary literature works in middle schools is proper, whichaffects the efficiency of contemporary literature teaching, especially when we areconfronted with rival opinions from experts or famous masters on this issue in thebackground that textbooks today are real-life-oriented. So to decide on the contentof contemporary literature teaching in middle schools has become the top issueinvolving the efficiency of Chinese language reading education.The author still finds some conceptional puzzles based on his study of practiceand discussion about the selection on the content of contemporary literatureteaching in recent years and theories and viewpoints of Chinese language educationresearch experts and special grade teachers on contemporary literature teachingeducation as well as his nearly eighteen-year practice and experience of teaching himself. He finds it difficult to integrate various opinions onto one stage and some ofthem even clashes against each other. In terms of the most puzzling problems toteachers in practice, there always exists a lack of deeper presentations or practicalopinions for teachers on the job. Thus, the author tries to do a focused explanationon sorting out concepts and theories concerned and questionnaires on current statesof the teachers. The aim is mainly to provide a basis with reason for on-the-jobteachers in contemporary literature teaching. So the author sorts most textsinvolving contemporary literature in the textbooks of Chinese language for middleschools in Shanghai (trial version still) by style and does a proper explanation on howto select the content of teaching in the form of case analysis of regularly discussedand controversial texts in each textbook.The thesis is consisted of five chapters, which can be summarized as follows:Chapter one mainly presents a brief introduction on the concept, significanceand tasks of Chinese language reading education and makes a review about thegeneral statement in <Chinese Language Curriculum Standards of CompulsoryEducation> about demands for the purpose and content of ‘reading’, comprehensionabout the practice of reading education, the basic function of the content ofChinese language textbooks, the value of objects in reading education and how todecide the content of reading education. The author arrives at the conclusion thatthe hardship in deciding what to teach in contemporary literature teaching is theterrible obstacle in teaching combined with his personal practice experience andother information such as questionnaires.Chapter two mainly gives separate explanations on deciding the content ofChinese language curriculum, the content of textbooks, the selected articles in thetextbooks, the content of reading education and the content of Chinese languageteaching.Chapter three mainly introduces significant problems in the teaching ofcontemporary literature works in middle schools and focuses on the discussion ofselecting the content of contemporary literature teaching in middle schools,presenting statements from the involving knowledge on text styles including prose, novels, poems and plays and current teaching situations and giving specific analysisin the form of case analysis.Chapter four comes to five aspects of foundations about how to select thecontent of contemporary literature teaching and makes explanations for each aspectbased on the analysis and explication in former chapters.Chapter five is the thinking and Prospect of Chinese teaching content.