Time Flower Rain. Issue 2

Author: Wang Xiang, Meng Di
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-01-01
Features: The Basic Education Chinese Reading Research Development Center, under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Education, has transformed the research outcomes of the project "Integrated Research on Middle School Students' Reading Skills and Comprehensive Quality Education" into the organization of this series of "Reading Edition Chinese" textbooks. The series aims to better serve Chinese language teaching and testing in middle schools and to better support comprehensive quality education for middle school students. It is a scientific, systematic, rigorous, and authoritative "new type of comprehensive quality education elective supplementary textbook for Chinese language." As a supplementary textbook for the experimental promotion of Chinese language teaching in middle schools, it is used in synchronization with the current main textbooks used in various school districts. It is also used as a supplementary textbook for the compulsory and elective courses of Chinese language teaching. Based on years of research results from relevant projects of the Ministry of Education, the series was developed over three years under the guidance of multiple experts from the Ministry of Education's subject expert group, with repeated discussions and joint writing by nearly 300 frontline senior and distinguished teachers across the country. It underwent experimental use in several teaching and experimental use areas in Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hubei, and Anhui provinces. During the experimental use, it received widespread praise and achieved high teaching effectiveness, and was improved and revised based on positive feedback.
The compilation principles of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series
1. The compilation of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series is centered on the requirements of the Ministry of Education's newly formulated "Curriculum Standards" and "Teaching Outline" for the current stage of middle school students' Chinese reading. It adheres to the principle of serving the "three aspects" of the "Curriculum Standards" for middle school Chinese language teaching and testing—"knowledge and skills," "process and methods," and "attitudes and values"—with a focus on cultivating students' abilities in applying, appreciating, and exploring Chinese language.
2. The compilation of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series also emphasizes the testing (evaluation) of teaching outcomes. According to the testing and evaluation abilities required by the "New Curriculum Standards" for middle school Chinese language teaching, it provides targeted training, sets up corresponding assessments, and draws on the latest models of the junior high school and senior high school exams, incorporating the latest achievements of test-setting experts to align with the junior high school and senior high school exams.
3. The compilation of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series aims to comprehensively improve the Chinese language comprehensive quality of middle school students. Through the use of the "Reading Edition Chinese," students acquire knowledge and skills in five developmental aspects—accumulation and integration, perception and appreciation, reflection and comprehension, application and expansion, and discovery and innovation—to promote balanced and personalized development.
Accumulation and integration
The "Reading Edition Chinese" enables students to focus on self-organization during the accumulation process of Chinese language comprehensive quality. It allows students to leverage their strengths and address weaknesses, gradually forming a personalized Chinese language learning approach. It employs appropriate methods to solve problems in reading and communication. By integrating elements of Chinese language knowledge, skills, learning methods, emotions, attitudes, and values, it effectively improves students' Chinese literacy.
Perception and appreciation
The "Reading Edition Chinese" enables students to savor the language and feel the ideological and artistic charm of excellent works through reading, developing their imagination and aesthetic ability. Through reading and appreciation, students deepen their love for the Chinese language, experience the vastness, depth, and long history of Chinese culture, cultivate their temperament, and improve their moral cultivation.
Reflection and comprehension
The "Reading Edition Chinese" enables students to grasp its rich connotations through reading and reflection according to their learning goals, explore the value of life and the spirit of the times, gradually form their own thoughts and behavioral criteria, develop the habit of independent thinking and inquiry, and enhance the rigor, depth, and criticality of their thinking.
Application and expansion
The "Reading Edition Chinese" enhances students' comprehensive ability to correctly, skillfully, and effectively use the Chinese language. It broadens students' horizons through application, helping them initially recognize their potential and tendencies in learning Chinese. Based on their needs, they can develop in their favorite fields. By using it, students improve their cross-disciplinary learning ability, expand the scope of Chinese language learning, and enhance their comprehensive application ability through extensive practice.
Discovery and innovation
The "Reading Edition Chinese" focuses on cultivating students' ability to observe language, literature, and cultural phenomena in China and abroad, learning to identify problems from facts and processes, fostering a sense of inquiry and sensitivity to discovering issues. It ensures students maintain a strong interest and passion for the unknown world, pursuing innovative thinking and expression.
The composition and functions of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series
The "Reading Edition Chinese" series (volume) is divided into seven series, each with ten volumes. They are: "Chinese Morning Reading" (10 volumes), "Innovative Reading" (10 volumes), "Beautiful Prose Like a Song" (10 volumes), "Current Article Rain" (10 volumes), "Intelligent Article Starry Sky" (10 volumes), "Gazing at the Great" (10 volumes), and "Looking Back at History" (10 volumes).
The "Reading Edition Chinese" series addresses the problems students encounter in reading practice from multiple perspectives and levels, solving the following aspects: ① What to read—goals, ② Why to read—purposes, ③ How to read—methods, and ④ How well to read—evaluation. The various sub-series complement each other, are closely related, yet have distinct focuses.
"Current Article Rain," "Intelligent Article Starry Sky," "Gazing at the Great," and "Looking Back at History" primarily address the question of "what to read." These four series provide middle school students with numerous short, fresh, profound, and vivid reading materials, allowing them to read without burden, learn to read, fall in love with reading, and benefit lifelong.
"Chinese Morning Reading" and "Beautiful Prose Like a Song" focus on "how to read," emphasizing method guidance. Both series select high-quality reading materials, enabling students to fully absorb the essence of each article, experience the wisdom of the times, easily appreciate life, and accumulate humanistic charm. The outstanding features of these two series are their primary goals of guiding and improving students' reading ability and helping them grasp techniques and methods.
"Innovative Reading" focuses on the evaluation of goals, purposes, and methods. This series emphasizes synchronous teaching and exams, aiming to help students break free from tedious and fragmented reading, stimulate reading interest, and subtly implement "education with love, cultivation of beauty, training of wisdom, and enhancement of writing." It accumulates knowledge, materials, emotions, and thoughts.
The format features of the "Reading Edition Chinese" series
Although the seven series of the "Reading Edition Chinese" have different focuses, they complement each other and are closely interconnected. The series takes knowledge accumulation and language sense cultivation as the main thread, selecting excellent campus literature suitable for students' reading, compiling Chinese language knowledge and writing materials, not only meeting the needs of students' cultural literacy and knowledge accumulation but also closely aligning with the new "Curriculum Standards," providing students with the most classic wisdom readers for morning reading classes.
The series has the following format settings and functional features:
1. Two editions, "Silver Edition" and "Gold Edition," are arranged based on the principle of progressive ability levels. The Silver Edition is the basic edition, and the Gold Edition is the advanced edition (designed for students with surplus learning capacity). On the basis of developing good morning reading habits, it further aims to understand culture, improve taste, open minds, and comprehensively enhance students' Chinese reading and writing abilities.
2. The format structure is set according to teaching progress and learning stages. The series is divided into two modules per volume, with each module covering approximately 15 weeks of content, based on learning stages, teaching progress, and teaching requirements.
3. Different formats are provided daily from Monday to the weekend. Monday: [Memorize classic poems]; Tuesday: [Recite beautiful and current articles]; Wednesday: [Record exquisite idioms]; Thursday: [Read stories of famous people]; Friday: [Appreciate junior high school (senior high school) excellent works] and [Appreciate famous works by famous authors]; Weekend (junior high school): [Learn about the history of thousands of years].
Requirements for using the "Innovative Reading" series (10 volumes)
The newly formulated "Curriculum Standards" place strong emphasis on reading ability, especially including extracurricular reading in the curriculum objectives, clarifying teaching strategies, evaluation opinions, and total reading volume requirements. To adapt to this trend and reflect new teaching concepts, we organized a group of distinguished and senior teachers to compile this series, making it convenient for teachers, parents, and students to choose reading materials. The reading selections in this series strive to have a distinct sense of the times and rich humanistic connotations, reflecting the latest developments in science and technology, the realities of school, family, and social life, and the beautiful emotions, cooperation, and friendly relationships between people. They reveal life and philosophical truths. At the same time, they emphasize the combination of readability and interesting content, allowing students to receive moral and literary through relaxed reading.
Requirements for using the "Beautiful Prose Like a Song" series (10 volumes)
This series selects excellent prose masterpieces that have emerged in recent years, including narrative and lyrical essays, as well as miscellaneous articles with a literary flavor. Each article provides three different styles and perspectives for appreciation, aiming to inspire and enlighten students.
Requirements for using the "Current Article Rain" series (10 volumes)
The "current articles" referred to here are those closely related to the times. Most of the selected articles are new essays and sketches from 2003 onwards, ensuring their timeliness. The articles are arranged according to the age level of the reading audience, with difficulty ranging from low to high and depth from shallow to profound. Each article is followed by "guiding" text. The format is concise and clear, while the content is profound yet easy to understand.
Requirements for using the "Intelligent Article Starry Sky" series (10 volumes)
This series of 10 volumes was compiled by dozens of frontline distinguished and senior Chinese language teachers over nearly two years, selecting more than 4,000 simple yet thought-provoking fables and philosophical stories. Each story is followed by a teacher's reflection, aiming to convey profound life truths in plain and vivid language, which is highly effective for cultivating the "spiritual foundation" of adolescents and accumulating writing materials.
Requirements for using the "Gazing at the Great" series (10 volumes)
Each volume features influential Chinese and foreign cultural figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Shakespeare, and Victor Hugo, widely collecting in-depth evaluation articles about these masters by themselves and others. These articles are positive in thought and emphasize humanistic care, providing positive references for students' personal growth, writing, and reading.
Requirements for using the "Looking Back at History" series (10 volumes)
Each volume selects historical figures from China and abroad, such as Qu Yuan, Sima Qian, Xiang Yu, Emperor Wu of Han, Zu Chongzhi, Cao Cao, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Nicolaus Copernicus, compiling exquisite articles written by them or about them. The selected texts balance literary charm and interest, avoiding dryness and stiffness. The "Looking Back at History" series aims to increase students' historical knowledge, allowing them to engage in conversations with historical figures in a relaxed and pleasant mood, improve their reading ability, accumulate writing materials, and enhance their writing skills.
Requirements for using the "Reading Edition Chinese" series
The "Innovative Reading" series adopts a 1+1 model from the seventh to the eighth grades to the ninth and tenth grades, divided into "Basic Achievement" and "Knowledge and Ability Upgrade" editions. The ninth and tenth grades use the "Comprehensive Challenge" edition. Students are required to engage in relaxed reading and training, achieving the goal of practicing while reading, understanding while practicing, and writing after understanding, thereby improving their appreciation and writing skills.
The "Chinese Morning Reading" series adopts a 1+1 model from the seventh to the eighth grades to the ninth and tenth grades, divided into the Silver Edition and the Gold Edition. The ninth and tenth grades use the Diamond Edition (Comprehensive Breakthrough Edition). Students are required to practice according to the selected texts, focusing on guiding them in understanding, reflection, appreciation, creation, expression, and imagination; emphasizing ability training; nurturing reading methods; and connecting extracurricular and in-class learning.
Requirements for using the "Beautiful Prose Like a Song," "Current Article Rain," and "Intelligent Article Starry Sky" series
In the junior high school stage, students are required to complete the first six volumes, and students with surplus learning capacity can optionally read the seventh to tenth volumes. In the senior high school stage, students must complete the seventh to tenth volumes after reading the first six volumes.
Reading cannot change the length of life, but it can change its width; reading cannot change the appearance of life, but it can change its atmosphere! "Reading Edition Chinese," let us work together to make reading a lifelong pursuit!