Selected Prose: Listening to the Sound of Spring Blossoms

Author: Zhang Jian
Publisher:
Publish 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 "An Integrated Study of Middle School Students' Reading Skills and Comprehensive Quality Education" into the organization of this series of "Reading 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." As supplementary teaching materials for experimental promotion in middle schools, it is used in sync with the current Chinese language textbooks used in various school districts. It is also used as supplementary materials for the compulsory and elective courses of Chinese language teaching. Based on years of research results from relevant projects under 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 was experimentally used in several teaching and experimental 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 Chinese" series:
1. The compilation of the "Reading Chinese" series is centered on the requirements of the newly formulated "Curriculum Standards" and "Teaching Syllabus" for middle school students' Chinese reading at the current stage. It adheres to the principle of serving the "three aspects" of the "Curriculum Standards" for Chinese language teaching and testing in middle schools—"knowledge and skills," "process and methods," and "attitudes and values"—with a focus on cultivating students' abilities to apply, appreciate, and explore Chinese language.
2. The compilation of the "Reading Chinese" series also emphasizes the testing (evaluation) of teaching outcomes. According to the testing and evaluation requirements for Chinese language teaching outcomes in the new Curriculum Standards, it provides targeted training, sets up corresponding assessments, and draws on the new models of the junior high school and senior high school exams, incorporating the latest achievements of question-setting experts to align with the junior high school and senior high school exams.
3. The compilation of the "Reading Chinese" series aims to comprehensively improve the Chinese language comprehensive quality of middle school students. Through the use of "Reading Chinese," students acquire knowledge and skills in five developmental aspects—"accumulation and integration," "perception and appreciation," "thinking and comprehension," "application and expansion," and "discovery and innovation"—to promote balanced and personalized development.
Accumulation and Integration
"Reading Chinese" enables students to focus on self-organization during the process of accumulating comprehensive Chinese language knowledge. It allows students to leverage their strengths and address weaknesses, gradually forming a personalized approach to Chinese language learning. It employs appropriate methods to solve problems in reading and communication. By integrating comprehensive Chinese language knowledge, skills, learning methods, and elements of attitudes and values, it effectively improves students' Chinese literacy.
Perception and Appreciation
"Reading Chinese" enables students to savor the language and feel the ideological and artistic charm of excellent works, developing their imagination and aesthetic abilities. Through reading and appreciation, students deepen their love for the Chinese language, experience the vastness, depth, and longevity of Chinese culture, refine their temperament, and improve their moral cultivation.
Thinking and Comprehension
"Reading Chinese" enables students to grasp its rich connotations through reading and reflection, explore the value of life and the spirit of the times, gradually form their own principles of thought and action, develop the habit of independent thinking and inquiry, and enhance the rigor, depth, and criticality of their thinking.
Application and Expansion
"Reading Chinese" enhances students' comprehensive ability to correctly, skillfully, and effectively use the Chinese language. It broadens students' horizons in application, helping them initially recognize their potential and tendencies in learning Chinese. Based on their needs, they can develop further in their preferred fields. Through use, it improves cross-disciplinary learning abilities, expands the scope of Chinese language learning, and enhances comprehensive application abilities through extensive practice.
Discovery and Innovation
"Reading Chinese" focuses on cultivating students' ability to observe language, literature, and cultural phenomena in China and abroad. It teaches students 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 Chinese" series
The "Reading Chinese" series (volume) is divided into seven series, each with ten volumes. They are: "Morning Reading in Chinese" (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); "Looking Back at History" (10 volumes).
The "Reading Chinese" series addresses the problems students encounter in reading practice from multiple perspectives and levels, focusing on the following aspects: ① What to read—goals, ② Why read—purposes, ③ How to read—methods, ④ How well to read—evaluation. The various sub-series complement each other, are closely related, yet each has its own focus.
"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 pressure, learn to read, fall in love with reading, and benefit lifelong.
"Morning Reading in Chinese" 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 cultural charm. The outstanding features of these two series are their primary goals of guiding and improving students' reading abilities 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 instill "education with love, cultivation of beauty, training of wisdom, and enhancement of writing." It helps students accumulate knowledge, materials, emotions, and thoughts.
The format features of the "Reading Chinese" series
Although the seven series of the "Reading Chinese" series 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 to read, 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 classic wisdom readers for morning reading classes.
The series has the following format settings and functional features:
1. Based on the principle of progressive ability levels, two versions are arranged: the Silver Edition (basic level) and the Gold Edition (advanced level, 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' 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 one module for each academic year—Module 1 and Module 2. Each module is approximately arranged for 15 weeks.
3. From Monday to the weekend, different formats are provided daily. 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], [Appreciate famous works by renowned authors]; Weekend (junior high school)—[Know the history of thousands of years].
Requirements for using the "Innovative Reading" series (10 volumes)
The newly formulated "Curriculum Standards" strongly emphasize reading ability, especially including extracurricular reading in the curriculum goals, 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. The reading selections in the series strive to have a distinct sense of the times and rich humanistic connotations, reflecting the latest developments in science and technology, genuinely depicting school, family, and social life, expressing beautiful emotions, cooperation, and friendly relationships between people, and revealing life and philosophical truths. At the same time, it emphasizes the combination of readability and interesting content, allowing students to receive moral and literary enlightenment through relaxed reading.
Requirements for using the "Beautiful Prose Like a Song" series (10 volumes)
This series selects excellent prose works 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 prose from 2003 onwards, ensuring 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. A "guiding" text is provided after each article, with a concise and clear form and in-depth yet easy-to-understand content.
Requirements for using the "Intelligent Article Starry Sky" series (10 volumes)
This series of ten books was painstakingly 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. A teacher's reflection is added at the end of each wisdom story, striving to explain profound life philosophies in plain and vivid language, which is highly effective for teenagers to "build a solid foundation for their spirit" and accumulate writing materials.
Requirements for using the "Gazing at the Great" series (10 volumes)
Each volume lists influential Chinese and foreign cultural figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Shakespeare, and Hugo, widely collecting in-depth evaluation articles about these masters 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 book 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 interesting content, 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 reading ability, accumulate writing materials, and enhance writing skills.
Requirements for using the "Reading 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 the "Basic Achievement" and "Knowledge and Ability Upgrade" versions. The ninth and twelfth grades use the "Comprehensive Challenge" version. Students are required to engage in relaxed training through relaxed reading, achieving the goal of practicing while reading, understanding while practicing, and writing after understanding, to improve appreciation and writing skills.
The "Morning Reading in Chinese" series adopts a 1+1 model from the seventh to the eighth grades to the ninth and tenth grades, divided into the Silver and Gold versions. The ninth and twelfth grades use the Diamond (Comprehensive Breakthrough) version. Students are required to practice according to the selected texts, focusing on guiding them in understanding, comprehension, appreciation, creation, expression, and imagination; emphasizing ability training; nurturing reading methods; and noting the connection between 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 Chinese"—let us work together to make reading a lifelong pursuit!