The setting of the topic has been repeatedly complained about Why is language reading comprehension "difficult to understand" every year?

Source: Beijing Daily

Why is reading comprehension "difficult" every year?

Du pear

"Grandpa, what is the sister of the sea orchid thinking?" "Grandpa, it's too hard"... Recently, the old writer Balji Wilderness received a lot of Weibo shouts. Originally, the excerpt of his novel "The Child of Ulan Pastoral Riding" entered some junior high school language final exam reading questions, and many students were embarrassed by the question of "supplementing the inner activities of sea orchids", and they left messages on the writer's Weibo for help. For the children's distress, Borji Wilderness responded enthusiastically and posted the original content on Weibo.

Judging from the original work, the writing is smooth and natural, full of childlike fun, and there is no sense of abruptness in what the "Sea Orchid Sister" thinks, but due to the limited length of the examination paper, the excerpts as reading questions have been deleted a lot, coupled with the natural subjectivity of understanding and expression, it may be difficult to accurately make up for it. However, at present, the reference answers and scoring standards are still unknown, and the writers posting the original work is also a welcome reading and perfect understanding, and the children do not have to be too anxious.

Putting aside this shout, in fact, reading comprehension questions are too difficult or too "enigmatic" and cause controversy almost every year. Remember that in 2017, a fish on the Zhejiang Provincial College Entrance Examination Language Examination Paper that "still had a strange light in its eyes" overwhelmed many candidates, and even the author himself was "defeated". The writer Zhou Guoping also published a special selection of works, collecting the articles he was selected for the examination paper, but the title of the book was "Saying No to the Standard Answer".

So, why are reading comprehension questions so often complained about, and even the author himself is often difficult to understand? To be fair, the writer writes by virtue of literary skills and life accumulation, and the next writing into a text is a natural expression; and the "proposition" is a "technical analysis" process such as reading and sublimation of chapters and excerpts, and the state of mind and purpose of "painting a beautiful person" and "dissecting a beautiful person" are very different, and the author himself cannot get a high score in reading comprehension, but it is not so unusual. Of course, there are indeed some cases in reality: some reading comprehension questions are far from the real "understanding", or when the question is written, the head is cut off in order to set the question, the pit is deliberately dug, or the "highlighting the degree of distinction" is difficult and twisted, or the standard answer is not allowed to be allowed to "side-by-side" when scoring... All of this is obviously not a reasonable deviation, but a "misunderstanding of reading" in the name of "reading comprehension".

Just as the so-called "a thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets", the understanding of the article is inherently different, rigidly demanding "standard answers" and rejecting "pluralistic understanding", I am afraid that it is contrary to the original intention of language education. Language teaching, especially the design of test questions, should grasp the degree of "objective standards" and "multiple understandings", pay attention to refining consensus in the formulation of questions, and have less rubber pillar drums in judgment. In fact, although language is a discipline that focuses on understanding, pointing directly to the mind, and subjective pluralism, it is not without laws to follow. Those famous pieces throughout the ages, which can be widely recognized by the public, are the common aesthetic interest. From this point of view, analyzing famous masterpieces, reading comprehension, and "action decomposition" and careful tasting of some classic basic skills such as word and sentence, scene description, and layout of plots are important ways of language learning. When the question is written, there are more scientific and reasonable considerations, and when judging the paper, it can be "justified in words", and even "tolerate unique insights", although it will increase the difficulty of the work, but it also tests the level of wisdom and witnesses the concept of education.

In the long run, with the increasing application of diversified assessments, in addition to optimizing examination questions and evaluation papers, language education can also enrich evaluation methods and reduce dependence on "one paper test papers". Only by establishing a scientific and reasonable evaluation method can we create a richer and more natural literary space for children.