Goal: To expand your imagination and experience the beauty of art with the help of language and writing.
The beauty of art
The beauty of art is a broad and profound topic, which we can start with an important essay by the aesthetic master Zhu Guangqian, "The Three Values of an Ancient Pine". In this paper, Zhu Guangqian proposed three kinds of beauty in art: seeking truth, seeking goodness, and seeking beauty. He believes that botanists can appreciate the true value of ancient pines, firewood merchants show the good side through profits from trading, and artists express the beauty of ancient pines through artistic processing.
These three beauties represent the way and value of different types of people to appreciate ancient pines from different perspectives.
Language and text
In the text "Shu Dai Song Painting Cow", there are only two paragraphs in total, and we must polish this short literary text more. The polishing of classical Chinese is first reading, followed by translation, and finally multi-level understanding. In this teaching, we must first rely on the text, and then conduct multiple verifications to experience the essence of various artistic "forms" and appreciate the beauty of art. Since this article was written in the Song Dynasty and the author is Su Dongpo, we are required to expand our imagination. At this point, our goal is understood.
First, adopt the basic path of modern literature
To learn classical Chinese, we can try to adopt the basic path of modern Chinese, let's interpret it together:
Start with the topic
The word "book" in "Shu Dai Song Painting Cow", after query, refers to the meaning of "inscription". In ancient times, after seeing a painting or reading an article, people would write down their feelings and evaluations, which was called "ba". After Su Shi saw this painting, he wrote down his feelings, which is his inscription for this work.
This article written by Su Shi "Shu Dai Song Painting Cow" belongs to prose from a stylistic point of view. Prose is a literary form. Compared with Chinese writing and poetry, prose is more free and loose, and does not adhere to requirements such as rhyme and word count. When writing prose, you don't have to pursue rhyme or a specific word count too much, and you can play freely according to your own wishes, write more or write less. This is what makes prose unique from other genres.
We only need to remember that "Shu Dai Song Painting Cow" is an essay, which is the "Ba" written by Su Shi after watching this painting.
Ask questions and spread deeper
After interpreting the question, we let the child read freely.
We can ask questions: here note that in the upper grades we do not have to translate word for word, because the child knows the general meaning and can directly ask questions. There are two paragraphs in the text, and we asked the children to choose the passage that describes Su Shi's accident. It's easy for a child to choose the second paragraph.
Here is a first take the child to understand the general meaning: one day Su Shi went out and met Du Virgin to post calligraphy and painting, and the "exposure" here can be explained to the child as the meaning of "drying". Then he met a shepherd boy to give advice, and finally Du said that he was wrong. When learning classical Chinese, you can use the basic methods of modern Chinese. First ask about the specific plot or event described in the text, so that students can understand the content of the story naturally and unconsciously.
Next, let's ask: We know that Su Shi met a total of two people: Shepherd Boy and Du Virgin. Then he asked, "Who is Du Zhishi?" Here we can explain the meaning of "virgin", Du Virgin is a learned and famous person surnamed Du, here we can find that Du Virgin and the shepherd boy have a huge gap, this gap as soon as it comes out, it creates a contradiction for the next teaching.
Then asked the third question: "At that time, what kind of evaluation did Su Shi hear?" "We can start by reading the description and evaluation for the children. Once they understand the overall meaning, they will no longer struggle with dividing stanzas or pauses, but will try different reading styles according to their understanding. Although the status gap between Du Virgin and the shepherd boy is very large, their views on this matter are indeed the same. So has the contradiction resolved here? In fact, instead of being resolved, the contradiction here has deepened. We know that the identity gap between Du Virgin and the shepherd boy is very large, and the difference in views on one thing should also be very large, but here their views are surprisingly consistent, which deepens this contradiction. At this point, we have fully activated students' intellectual curiosity.
Ask the fourth question: Here we need to pay attention to the main body of the character and dig deep into the background of the character: Who is Su Shi? We know that Su Shi is a painter, poet, calligrapher, foodie and other multiple identities, in summary, we can summarize Su Shi as an artist. Here is a reminder to recall two poems: "Title West Forest Wall" and "Drinking the First Sunshine and After the Rain on the Lake", these two very philosophical poems are confirming Su Shi's two wisdoms: wisdom and insight.
After understanding this, we return to the question: At this time, what was Su Dongpo thinking? Looking back at the last sentence of the original article, "unchangeable" may be Su Shi's conclusion, this kind of unchangeable is the truth, and practice is the only criterion for testing the truth. Here we can return to the goal: to experience the beauty of art. Discovering that at this time, in the three beauty of art: truthfulness, goodness and beauty, Su Dongpo unconsciously experienced the truth-seeking beauty of art.
Here we can add a question: at this time, the children will move Su Shi to themselves, and they will also feel that they must practice to come out of true knowledge.
Second, where is the art you see in this essay
Next, let's talk about art on three levels, and these three levels must be in our text. How to guide it?
1. The art of painting
Let's introduce Dai Song, Dai Song is represented by painting cows, he paints cows have a characteristic, he will put cows back into the fields, gardens, mountains, rivers these nature, in addition to bullfighting pictures, he also has bull pictures, returning to cows, crossing bulls, running bulls, etc., the cows he painted are very real, very beautiful. So how could such a professional cow drawing expert draw wrong? At this point, everyone asks, "Who is at fault?" ”
2. The art of collecting
We focus on the first natural paragraph:
The beauty of collecting is the beauty of seeking goodness in art, and protecting art well is a kind of goodwill.
3. The art of appreciation
Just now we talked about seeking truth and seeking goodness, then this tasting is seeking beauty. When the little shepherd boy tasted this painting, his perspective was very narrow, and his tasting pattern was based on facts; Du's tasting pattern lies in the beauty of inclusiveness and integration.
The beauty of this article is that Du Shushi does not make judgments, knows how to appreciate the little shepherd boy's point of view, has a bit of adult feelings in it, sees through without saying broken, and respects the little shepherd boy's truth. Even if Dai Song really painted wrong, Du Zhishi also showed the beauty of tolerance here. Su Shi also has his aesthetic value judgment, and through the aforementioned list of his poems, we know that Su Shi is a person who pursues a philosophy of life.
Earlier, we have been creating a suspense, the status of these two people is very different, at this time we can close this suspense loop, the disparity in status does not affect their mutual appreciation.
At this point, our three artistic beauty: truth, goodness, and beauty, are all reviewed.
Concluding remarks
The three realms of Chinese language learning in the upper grades:
Text level
The text level is a basic level, which refers to the ability to understand and use words. If you can read classical Chinese proficiently in the upper grades, it means that you have a good foundation at the literal level. This is very important and a must-have skill.
Literary and artistic level
At the literary level, students need to understand the meaning of sentences and move on to a deeper level of understanding. In addition, they need to use after-class exercises for activities such as story retelling, vernacular translation, etc. This is a task that must be completed at the literary and artistic level.
Cultural dimension
There must be a cultural dimension in classical Chinese. This cultural dimension can be seen as an exploration, i.e. when we interpret classical Chinese, we engage in various explorations. For example, we will explore what Dai Song's identity is, we will explore who Su Shi is, we will explore the authenticity of the bullfighting diagram, and we will explore the meaning of it.