Walking is also a dangerous activity in some areas that have experienced war because of landmines. Only by first removing the mines one by one can we ensure the safety of the march. For reading, the words, phrases, and sentences in the book that you don't know much about are potential "thunder". If you read with "thunder", on the one hand, it will affect your understanding of the whole article or the whole book, and on the other hand, these misunderstandings may always remain in your head, and later you will use the content of these misunderstandings without knowing it, so it is very dangerous. This requires you to "sweep mines".
However, the operation of "minesweeping" will occupy cognitive resources, which will affect our reading effect. This is because reading is about immersion, and "minesweeping" is about taking out words, words, and sentences to find out and understand, which obviously destroys this immersion. So what to do? You can separate the two activities, read them once for the purpose of "clearing mines," and then read them a second time, so that you can immerse yourself in the reading.
For example, there is such a passage in Lao She's famous book "Four Generations in the Same Hall":
Without food, Beiping also lost its world-renowned handicraft industry. Hungry people no longer buy jade rings and earrings, delicate jewelry gilded, gilded or real gold, elegant carpets, carved mahogany tables and chairs, colorful cloisonné like flowers, and grouting cricket jars...... The people of Peking did not have the leisure money to buy these things, and there was no way to transport them out, so those ingenious workers starved with everyone.
If you look at the above paragraph, is there a word in it that you don't know much about, that is, "thunder"? There are no obscure words in this passage, and there is no academic concept, but there is one word that raises a little doubt for me - cloisonné. I don't think there is any Chinese who don't know cloisonne, but what cloisonne is, it seems to be vague in my mind, and the impression is a colorful and gorgeous porcelain.
So I checked the Internet and got an introduction to cloisonné. Originally, cloisonné was called "copper tire cloisonné enamel", "it is a kind of utensils made of various patterns on the copper tire type, with soft flat copper wire, pinched into various patterns, and then filled with enamel glaze in the pattern, and then fired". In other words, the main body of cloisonné is copper, which is a kind of metalware, not porcelain, and my impression is wrong!
Then I became curious, and I wanted to know how many people had this false impression like me. So I made up a question and posted it in the circle of friends and several WeChat groups to test everyone. The question goes like this: "Accidentally, this precious cloisonné vase was smashed to the ground by me and shattered. This statement is wrong, do you know why?
The answers were varied, some people thought that there was a problem with the subject, some people thought that the verb was used incorrectly, and only about 20% of people pointed out that cloisonné is a billet of copper, and it is impossible to "fall to pieces", at most it is "flattened". I was expecting this result. Everyone has heard of cloisonne, and middle school Chinese textbooks have also talked about cloisonne, but most people don't know what cloisonne is!
Also out of curiosity, I wonder if those prestigious writers have used "cloisonné" incorrectly. As a result, I found a passage in the novel "Confusion" by the famous writer Rean Xue:
The female boss is engaged in porcelain trading, and the business is relatively light. She didn't want to do business, she just sat calmly in the store, and when a customer came, she would get up and say hello, not caring if they bought something or not. The porcelain she sold included bowls, plates, cups, teapots, tea trays, etc., and even a cloisonné vase.
Obviously, the author wrote cloisonné into the novel as porcelain. You see, even famous people make mistakes, not to mention us ordinary people? How many of the topics we talk about every day are what we really know? We watch so many articles and videos on the Internet every day, and how many of the people who create these contents really know what they are talking about? God, how many specious knowledge and concepts we have in our heads, and we are completely unaware of them. Why? Because most of the time our studies are in the form of swallowing dates, we have not gone to "sweep mines"!
We all know that reading can be divided into extensive reading and intensive reading, but usually we are just reading extensively. Of course, extensive reading is also needed to broaden our knowledge, but if we don't add intensive reading, then we will always be just floating on the surface, and we will not even experience what that real, thorough understanding looks like. In order to read carefully, it is essential to understand the exact meaning of a word or concept.
By "reading" I mean broadly. In this day and age, more and more people are learning through video and audio, which is also a kind of "reading" in a broad sense. When we read valuable videos and audios, we should also adopt the "mine-sweeping method" and first understand the various vocabulary, concepts, and knowledge points thoroughly before we can make real progress.
END
Excerpt from "Little Readers, Reading the World"
January 2024, Issue 353, Text/Copper Mining