Cao Yongjun: How Chinese teachers conduct professional reading

What is real reading? What is professional reading for teachers? Today, what ideological barriers should be broken down and what healthy reading concepts should be established… More importantly, how can teachers\’ professional reading be transformed into our teaching resources, teaching ideas and teaching vision? What are some ways of reference? This article by Teacher Cao provides examples of daily teaching practice exploration, providing practical guidance and inspiration for professional development. 01 What is real reading? What is reading for? I think reading is a kind of thinking, a kind of introspection, a kind of exploration, and an uncompromising with reality. To put it simply, you are actually a sinister person who wants to do something and has expectations for your life. If I didn\’t have this, I probably wouldn\’t study. In short, reading is a state of life, a way of life, and a spiritual life. This is my personal understanding. But it is difficult for us to study today. Today\’s society has the following characteristics: First, it is difficult for us to concentrate on one issue and think deeply about it for a long time. I often jump back and forth, and it seems that I receive a lot of things every day, but none of them leaves a deep mark in my mind. Second, our expression becomes superficial and fragmented. We like to read blog posts of about 140 words; we like to read pieces of articles, short things, and long ones that we can’t stand. Third, our autonomous memory ability is declining, which is often accompanied by certain professional rules and admonitions. For example, the leader says that we will come to attend a class tomorrow, and we are often passively memorized under this kind of oppression. Because we live in such an information age, it is not easy for people to calm down and read. The quality we need most today is not only reading, but it is particularly obvious in reading. What qualities are required? First, there are many to read. Can you choose the ones you need most? Second, you must be able to sit still. \”You have to sit on the bench for ten years without writing an empty sentence.\” You must have determination. Third, you must have independent thinking and critical abilities. What is reading? Reading is a kind of understanding. Voltaire famously said: Understanding is discovering me in you. Human spiritual movement is always like this, finding one\’s own shadow among various others, thereby enriching the understanding of self, projecting it onto the world, and enriching our understanding of the world. We can say that understanding is the process of discovering oneself among others, and discovering oneself is actually a process of life and mental growth. The so-called reading is to grow your life and mind. During the summer vacation, I took my wife to Fenghuang County in western Hunan. In the ancient city of Xiangxi, on the banks of the Tuojiang River, the morning fog has just dissipated, and the stilted buildings below are very cute. We rented a hotel in a Diaojiaolou and brought several books by Shen Congwen, which contained many insights and revelations about life. Walking through the streets of Phoenix, I took the books I brought with me, including the new ones I bought, and stamped many of them. These stamps are like a mark of life. Mr. Shen has a famous article – \”I read a small book and a big book at the same time.\” Mr. Shen told me that the greatest method of reading is \”it is better to travel thousands of miles than to read thousands of books.\” Life combined. I carved one for myselfMei Xianzhang: \”Reading awakens the soul.\” What is true reading? My answer is this. Looking back, sometimes when we study hard at a book, are we really reading? Does it have anything to do with your life? Does it prompt your life to continuously move and stretch from the lower realm to the higher realm? No! So what is real reading is really worth thinking about. 02 What is the real professional reading of teachers? To be honest, I am quite worried about this aspect. The current generation of teachers is a generation that grew up doing test papers. Chinese intellectuals can really be summed up in one word: \”One generation is inferior to the other.\” Look at Mr. Liang Qichao\’s generation, their foundation of Chinese studies is incomparable to ours. The group of people who came after the May Fourth Movement, such as Mr. Hu Shizhi, our fellow Anhui native, are incomparable to those before the May Fourth Movement. In the 1950s and 1960s after liberation, traditional learning took a big step back. There was another group of people in the 1980s and 1990s. Well now, this generation is called the \”examination generation\”. Their understanding of modern literature reading is this – what is modern literature reading? It is equivalent to the modern essay questions on the college entrance examination, and the modern essay reading questions on the mock paper I want to give students today: this is \”keyword understanding\”, this is called \”grasping the author\’s emotion\”, this is called \”appreciation of techniques\”… It’s all stuff on exam papers and stuff you learn for exams. It can be said that it has nothing to do with real reading. Speaking of which, I would like to share with you a personal reflection. I think that although test reading, normal reading and professional reading have similarities, they are not the same, or even very different. Test-type reading, to put it simply, is exam questions designed to test your ability. It has the characteristic of exaggerating and magnifying the details of the text, and generally no one may read like this. I often meet some parents in Nanjing. They are all well-known doctoral supervisors from various universities in Nanjing. When they have dinner with me, they often ask me helplessly and awkwardly: \”Teacher Cao, my child is not good at Chinese. How can I read modern literature?\” No, I won’t get any points. What else can I do?” I said, “Have you ever done the test?” He said, “I used to guide my child when she was little, and she can do it right now.” If I do one wrong thing, my daughter will be very disgusted: \’You don\’t want guidance, this thing you are guiding is full of crosses! \’\” I have an analogy for test-type reading: test-type reading is a bit like going to the hospital for a blood test when someone is sick. Let me verify and evaluate your reading ability. But the children study after me and give me the most precious three years of their lives. What they need is to develop and grow step by step from weak to strong reading ability. They don\’t need to go to the hospital all day long to \”check blood.\” Professional reading is different. Professional reading emphasizes more on the purpose, which is a reading strategy and reading skills used for the study of professional knowledge. Theoretically, as long as a person can read, he has the ability to read professionally. But in fact this is not the case, because many teachers have no reading life at all. If a teacher wants to develop, he must have professional reading. Can readOnly teachers of books are qualified to teach children to read, because we teach over and over again, and in the end we teach how to read books well. Don\’t think that what you teach is knowledge points. In fact, a good teacher teaches life and self. Why should we teach students? I am a reader. I can read this book well. I have read this book well with my children and learned to read – this is the basis! 03 We need to establish a reading concept. I sorted out the professional books I have read over the years and gave a brief introduction to my colleagues. The first book is \”The History of Reading\” and the second book is \”How to Read a Book\”. The author of the latter book, Adler, is very famous. He also edited a very influential book, \”Classics of the Western World\”. There are two other books that are also very good. One book is \”Yue Reader\” by Hao Mingyi. This book is good, it is easy to read, and it has beautiful pictures and texts. You can learn many new concepts about reading. There is another book that I would like to highly recommend, \”Reading Is Such a Good Thing\” by Zhang Xinyin. This book is very well written. One of the characteristics of my reading is that I often look to see if there is anything in the book that resonates with me. This is a condition for whether I am willing to spend money to buy this book in the end. I was reading the book \”Reading Is Such a Good Thing\”, and suddenly I came across a sentence. The author said: \”We all want to reread a good book after reading it, but we often don\’t reread it. Why?\” I felt like I had scratched an itch. The author said, \”Because you are busy, but also because your curiosity has been exhausted after reading this book.\” I think this sentence is really well said and very resonant. At that time, I read a few sentences in the bookstore, and I felt that a lot of power was scattered in various places in the book. Reading this type of book, I suddenly discovered a vast world. In fact, reading is not just reading modern literature for the college entrance examination as we originally imagined. Reading has a vast world and rich connotations. For example, the question of what book to read. Don’t think that there are many books in the world. In fact, there are not as many books worth reading as you think. One time we went to see Mr. Qian Liqun and when we talked about reading, Mr. Qian said: \”There are not many authentic canonical things, and there are not many original canonical things in any culture.\” Then he opened his fingers and counted them for us. , taking Chinese literature as an example, the original canon, that is, the thought and literature of that era, was born from this thing. It is a root, or echoes this thing, and is a hurdle that you cannot get around. He said that \”The Analects\”, \”Mencius\”, \”Laozi\” and \”Zhuangzi\” are a mixture of Confucianism and Taoism. It would be easier to read other books if these two books are understood. Then there is Sima Qian\’s \”Historical Records\” – historical books are the mother of Chinese learning. There are also Tang poems – we are very curious, why are there no Song poems? In fact, Tang poetry can best express the cultural spirit of a generation, and Song lyrics are also very good. However, to understand Tang poetry, you actually have Song poetry to some extent. The most original and indispensable thing is Tang poetry. There is also \”A Dream of Red Mansions\” and Lu Xun. Mr. Qian said that if you read these books well, you will find the roots of Chinese literature. What books do we read? Read these source materials. For example, the training value of reading a book that you don’t quite understand. We teachers often have a very foolish view. WeTexts are taught every day, and by the end of the lesson we feel that we should understand all the articles in the world. Actually this is wrong. There are too many books in this world that we cannot understand. I read many of Hegel\’s books when I was young. Today, to be honest, most of them are incomprehensible. Later I discovered that many experts also admitted that they did not understand everything. But is it worthless if you don’t understand it? What you don’t understand is still a stimulus and a calling. There are three types of books in the world. One is easy to understand at a glance and has no value. You are a consumer and has no meaning. Your reading ability has not been sharpened. The other is a kind of book that you don’t understand at all. Reading it is like reading it in vain. , the book from heaven, don’t read it; the third kind is half-understood, with many confusions and problems. Such books are the most valuable. A high school student should read some books that he doesn\’t quite understand, and read books that challenge his brain. Only then can they be valuable. When my children read \”Walden,\” they began to struggle and couldn\’t read it. Think about it again, there are 18 chapters in total, read the first 4 chapters first, especially the first chapter is the most difficult to understand. Thoreau\’s writing is not as organized as our Chinese writing. Okay, let’s start reading. Gradually, students begin to calm down and their minds become calm. I will finish reading in 70 days. When the children look at the translated version of the \”Western Chinese Classics\”, wow, they feel like they are looking down from above. Books that you don’t understand well are the most valuable. I taught Kafka\’s \”Metamorphosis\” to my students, and they were very happy. Two days later, a girl came, took a selection of Kafka\’s novels, and put it on the table: \”Teacher, I\’ve been reading it for a week, why can\’t I understand it?\” Who told you that a sophomore in high school can read it? Do you understand Kafka? Teacher Cao also doesn’t understand a lot, and many Kafka experts also don’t understand a lot. She thinks she should understand. Where does this idea come from? From classroom teaching. Our classes and teaching materials seem to adhere to the concept that we want students to understand and understand things clearly. In fact, what we call \”understanding\” and what we call \”penetration\”, have you ever thought about it, are just \”understanding\” and \”penetration\” in the sense of curriculum theory. Our teaching is to teach a little bit in a superficial sense of the curriculum. We have to tell the children: \”You understand this step first, and your life will be very long in the future. This poem has met you and entered your life. From now on you are friends, let’s get along slowly!” Another example is, what does it mean to understand. Many teachers may think this way: the so-called understanding means that you answered the modern reading question correctly. But those PhD supervisors who didn’t get the topic right can’t read this article? No, in fact, there are levels of understanding. There is a simple external criterion, which was mentioned by Mr. Zhu Guangqian. He said: When I read an article or a book, I must express it in my own words before I feel that I have really digested the book. This sentence is very simple and very important. It means that you can express the core of this book and this article in your own words. Also, different books have different ways of reading. Not all books in the world can be read in the same way, and there are different methods at different stages. After reading so many people\’s opinions, I still admire Bacon\’s words in \”On Reading\”. I copied it here: \”There are books that can be tasted briefly.\”, some can be swallowed, and a few need to be chewed for digestion. \”Here we need to analyze a concept, what is intensive reading? Many people think that skimming is equal to careless reading, and intensive reading is equal to serious reading. Wrong! Intensive reading and skimming are controlled at different times and speeds, but their seriousness is the same. Don\’t look at me standing next to the bookcase in Xinhua Bookstore and finishing reading \”The History of Reading\” in just one minute. In fact, my mind was running at high speed during this minute. I didn\’t mean to be very serious while reading it. A careless glance is not called reading. What is reading without sound and \”reading\” with sound? The important thing is to find your own classics in life. Youya, you can only find the classics you need. I wonder if you know Yang Zhishui? I admire her very much! She is a very legendary person, and she is doing all kinds of things in the Book of Songs. The examination of ancient artifacts had a great impact on Yang Zhishui, who never went to college and was self-taught. She said that there were three books that were most helpful to her, \”Guan Zhui Bian\” and \”Zhitang Shu Hua\”. There is a copy of \”Jin Ping Mei\”. She said that the content of \”Guan Zhui Bian\” is extensive and profound, but in fact it is a concatenated collection of materials, which means that when reading, you must excerpt and record the most essential things one by one. He said that he knew how to write articles after reading \”Zhitang Shuhua\”. Zhitang copied a paragraph on the left and a paragraph on the right. However, the articles he copied seemed to come easily. In fact, it all comes down to a topic. This is a very high level. \”Jin Ping Mei\” reminds us of the history of daily life and pays attention to details, so we enter the process and we don\’t have to rush towards the goal. She also said. I think the words are very good, saying that she reads \”piece by piece\”. What does it mean to read the notes first, and she reads all the books mentioned in the notes? First step, she has not yet learned it well. She knows that some teachers \”read shelf by shelf\”, and each shelf is full of books of the same category. This is what Adler calls the \”topic reading method\” of 04 teachers. The first way is to read it as a teaching resource. Everyone knows the ending of \”A Fang Gong Fu\”: \”The people of Qin have no time to mourn for themselves, and future generations will mourn for them; future generations will mourn for themselves and ignore them, which will also cause future generations to mourn for their descendants again.\” People too. \”Generally teachers will catch four \”descendants\” when they come to this. As I read it over and over again, I felt that in addition to the four \”descendants\” worth catching, there are also four \”sorrows\”. Everyone. Look: \”The people of Qin have no time to mourn themselves, and the descendants will mourn for them; the descendants will grieve and ignore it, which will also make the descendants to mourn for the descendants again. \”The four \”sorrows\” have a kind of looping beauty. Putting these four \”sorrows\” and the four \”descendants\” together actually hides a sadness that future generations can only lament but not change. Speaking of this, I will I prepared a piece of material about the \”cave-dwelling couple\” between Mr. Huang Yanpei and Mao Zedong. In 1945, Mr. Huang went to Yan\’an to visit Mao Zedong, who was making revolution in the mountains of northern Shaanxi. Mr. Huang talked all night in the cave house. For more than sixty years, I don’t talk about what I hear, but I know what I knowWhat we can see with our eyes is that as the saying goes, \”It rises rapidly, its demise is sudden.\” Many dynasties, many countries, and many groups cannot escape from a cyclical law. They prosper all of a sudden and then suddenly collapse. I would like to ask you gentlemen of the CCP, have you found a way to break this periodic law? Mao Zedong told him very confidently: \”We have found a new way. If we can break out of this cyclical law, it is democracy.\” I projected this passage, and after everyone saw it, they suddenly felt a lament for the rise and fall of Afang Palace. Zi has traveled through time to gain a deeper understanding of what kind of history we should establish about it. The teachers who attended the class all said they were inspired and asked where this material came from. I said I copied it from my daily reading and had it stored there. It can be seen that the more books you read, the richer your teaching resources will be. Second, reading as a teaching idea. When teaching Wang Wei\’s \”Dwelling in the Mountains in Autumn\”, I selected a piece of material from \”The Biography of Talented Scholars of the Tang Dynasty\”. It is not easy to derive Wang Wei from the material. He has a pair of painter\’s eyes and a pair of musician\’s ears. , and a heart of Zen joy, then we will discuss \”Mountain Dwelling in Autumn Ming\” from three aspects. Which three aspects? The beauty of painting, the beauty of sound, the beauty of Zen. I said these are the three keys to entering the world of Wang Wei\’s poetry. The class went very smoothly, and the students also felt that it was very rewarding, especially after getting these three keys to interpret Wang Wei\’s various small quatrains and small rhymed poems with poems in paintings and paintings in poems. smoothly. During the exchange after class, the teachers said that your idea was great. How did you come up with this idea? I said that I had read Ge Zhaoguang\’s \”Selected Notes on Tang Poems\”. I always thought this book was very well written and worth reading. The book published by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House completely imitated Mr. Qian Zhongshu\’s \”Selected Notes on Song Poems\”. It is the best The good part is the few paragraphs of introductory text at the beginning of each author\’s selected poems, which are just like \”Song Poetry Annotations\”. They are summarized very tastefully – I said I was inspired by that book. Therefore, reading can often give us a holistic understanding of a work, and when this understanding is connected with our teaching, we will gain a lot of inspiration for teaching ideas. Third, reading as a teaching perspective. Reading will give you a unique perspective. One time I was lecturing on an article, and when I was lecturing I talked about the \”study of prophecy\”. I asked how to pronounce this word, but the student didn\’t say anything because he didn\’t know how to pronounce it. When I asked what \”prophecy\” was, a carefree and fat little girl in front of me said, \”It\’s just superstition.\” I was right or wrong. Prophecy is a unique thing in Chinese culture. It is a prophecy and a symbol that hints at a person\’s destiny, good or bad luck. For example, if a child outside sings a nursery rhyme, it indicates that the dynasty is about to collapse. For example, a sentence spoken by a certain person can predict that person\’s subsequent success. The Chinese are very fond of prophecies. I asked the children why the Olympic Games opened at 8:08 on August 8, 2008. Some people said it was auspicious, and it was a lucky draw to express the Chinese people\’s expectations and blessings for the 100-year Olympic Games. But why is this auspicious? This national cultural psychology is the soil for the study of prophecy. If you don’t understand prophecy, you don’t understand the Chinese people. Later my students said:\”Teacher Cao, I admire you the most! That time you taught \’Chen Wei\’ was really enlightening. It was more Chinese than all Chinese classes. I really learned real Chinese!\” Because I teach the third year of high school and am a temporary teacher. Yes, in a very short period of time, there happened to be a word \”prophecy\”, and I happened to talk about it casually. It happened that a fat girl was talking about superstition, and then I talked about it non-stop. Things like this must be accumulated through daily reading. It is a kind of vision that can point out the things that are most valuable to children. Then teaching in this way will be very valuable and have a state of mind. Fourth, reading as a teaching background. Let me give you an example of teaching Su Shi\’s \”Niannujiao·Chibi Nostalgia\”. This is how I went to class: I arrived 10 minutes early and wrote the entire poem in traditional Chinese on the blackboard. No punctuation, just write it all down. After class, I asked the children to read the blackboard writing I wrote. After reading, I would add punctuation marks without reading. Although students have basically memorized or understood this poem before, there are still many mistakes in where to add punctuation. Then everyone understood it by referring to the book. I said that we have studied \”Qinyuanchun·Changsha\”, and there are key words in it that reveal the poet\’s writing ideas, which are \”travelled\” and \”recalling the past\” in \”bringing a hundred couples together to travel. Reminiscing about the glorious past.\” \”. I asked the students to find the words that reflect the change of thinking in this poem. The students found the \”remote thoughts\” of \”reminiscing about Gong Jin\’s time\” and the \”spiritual wandering\” of \”the homeland\”. From this, they experienced the poem\’s transformation from \”describing scenery\” to \”thinking about the scenery\”. \”Ode to history\”, and then to the structural level of \”expressing feelings\”. I asked the students to circle the words that best express the momentum of the ancient battlefield in Chibi. There are \”chaos\” in \”rocks piercing the sky\”, \”shock\” in \”turbulent waves crashing on the shore\”, and \”thousands of snow\” in \”rolling up\”. Thousands of piles of snow.” Then ask them to talk about why they are expressive. By the time they explained their reasons, the painting and the artistic conception contained in the poem had already filled the surroundings of me and the children. While it was still hot, I carried the plate down on my back. The bottom line of the poem is written about Zhou Yu, \”The country is picturesque, and there are so many heroes at one time.\” There are too many heroes in the Three Kingdoms, why only Zhou Yu is written? What details best express Zhou Yu? \”Feather Fan Lun scarf\”, holding a feather fan, wearing a Lun scarf, dressed elegantly and elegantly; \”Xiao Qiao is married for the first time\”, just married Xiao Qiao; and \”Talking and laughing room\”, which combines the handsome and elegant person The image of the young general was created, and the students molded him in their minds. Then why write about Zhou Yu\’s elegant and proud character? It\’s because of comparison with myself and because I\’m not proud of myself. At the end, \”The world is like a dream, and a statue still shines in the moonlight over the river.\” It\’s both easy to understand and difficult to understand, but it\’s very meaningful. Let\’s review \”Chibi Fu\”, then put it together, and finally understand the rich emotional connotation of the ending, and then recite the next line. All the upper and lower problems were solved in one class. Finally, I asked a student to read the poem in Nanjing dialect. Why read it in Nanjing dialect? Because many of the rhymes in this poem are rhyme characters, reading it in Nanjing dialect gives it a special emotional beauty after friction. Words are musical, but today we can no longer restore its musicality. We can only use this method to get a slight impression of it. I let studentsTell them the reason after reading it.