A Cultural Penetration Study Of Literacy Teaching In Primary Schools

Chinese Mandarin is one of the most important parts of Han Dynasty culture. As a signal system which is used to record Chinese language, it not only bears the minds of our ancestors, but also contains various kinds of traditional culture. There are distinctive cultural traits in Chinese characters.The teaching of literacy is an important part in Chinese teaching at primary schools. In our teaching, we are supposed to pay attention to these cultural traits and make use of them in a proper way, at proper time. As the General Chinese Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education said, through Chinese language teaching, our students will have the following abilities: knowing the rich and generous Chinese culture; absorbing the wisdom of national culture; caring about the modern culture life; respecting different cultures; absorbing the nutrition of the excellent culture of mankind and improving the cultural tastes. That means the teaching of literacy should be not only in accord with the above standards, but make students feel the cultural traits of Chinese characters and become more interested in learning. This essay first explains the cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy at primary schools, defines the meaning of cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy by analyzing the connotation of culture and the relationship between Chinese characters and culture, and proposes the significance of cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy:For example,I. It can stimulate the interest and improve the efficiency of Chinese character learning.II. It can prevent the character from being written wrongly and correct them.III. It can inherit the excellent national culture, cultivate the human nature and improve the quality of life.The following part of the essay makes an analysis on the content of the cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy at primary schools from the prospects of patterns, meanings and pronunciations of Chinese characters. The pattern of a Chinese character is composed of three parts, the structural type, the development & changes and the structural quantity, respectively. All these are closely related to the culture of Han nationality. Chinese characters are divided into six categories based on structure: pictographic characters, self-explanatory characters, ideographic characters, echoisms, synonymous characters and phonetic borrowings. The first four categories, in particular, directly carry the culture of Han nationality. In terms of pattern, changes of Chinese characters mainly center on ancient and modern characters, variant Chinese characters and complicated and simple characters. They all have close relations with culture. The structural quantity mainly refers to the number of parts which forming the structure of characters and how they are formed, which also has unlimited relations with the culture of the Han nationality. The final part describes the strategies for cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy at primary schools on the basis of analyzing the content of the cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy:I. Word processing analysis and knowing the meaning through feeling the shapes of characters;II. Stimulate the interest of learning through telling stories and word puzzles about Chinese characters;III. Choose various kinds of teaching methods according to students’ different ages;IV. Broaden some other new ways to know the cultural traits of Chinese characters. In the principle of character formation, Chinese characters are divided into single characters and compound characters, of which single characters mainly refer to pictographs and self-explanatory characters, while compound characters mean associative compounds and phonograms. The two categories are closely related as most compound characters are made up of single characters plus some radicals. It is suggested to firstly teach single characters which are frequently used to form other characters and then compound characters in accordance with the cognitive rules and the reception psychology of students. The Chinese teaching materials for primary schools in PEP edition has realized the importance of learning basic characters and exploring their original meanings. Therefore, the earliest pictographic characters are all matched with physical pictures and then followed by ancient characters and italic characters. Teachers shall fully understand the meaning of editors and conduct teaching in scientific way. In the final, the essay provides two cases on cultural infiltration through teaching of literacy.All in all, we cannot ignore the cultural traits of Chinese characters in our daily teaching, we need to pay attention to them and make good use of them in a proper way, at proper time. Gradually, students will be made to get the edification of the culture, feel the broad and profound of Chinese culture traits, absorb the wisdom of the national culture. The process of learning Chinese characters will be a process of improving themselves through feeling the culture itself.