As we all know, first-year students have not yet learned to write essays, but have only just begun to learn to read pictures and write words, and there is no word count requirement. Writing essays doesn't begin until the third grade. So, first-year students don't know how to write essays at all.
However, it is often the case that first-year students are asked to participate in an essay contest and have them write essays. This kind of thing is simply bizarre, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a kind of educational shamelessness.
Recently, I saw a content posted by a teacher in a certain school, saying that in order to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, a certain unit held an essay collection activity with prizes. So the school requires all grades 1 to 6 to participate.
The theme of the essay is "Motherland, I want to say to you". For the first grade, this can be used as a patriotic education activity, allowing students to say a few words to express their love and praise for the motherland, but if students are asked to write essays, I think it is difficult for strong students, and it is very inappropriate.
On the surface, the requirement for the first and second grades is less than 400 words, which is not high, because dozens of words, a hundred words, are also within 400 words, but if you write a hundred and dozens of words, it is not an essay. This kind of manuscript is taken to the competition, and there is no return at all, and it is in vain. Therefore, saying less than 400 words is actually no different from saying less than 10,000 words.
First-graders, who have just learned to read pictures and write words, know more than 1,000 words, but they don't have much vocabulary, and they have only learned punctuation marks, and they don't know anything about the layout of the article. Therefore, these limited knowledge reserves are simply not able to complete the task of writing essays.
First-year students struggle to read, and their comprehension skills are limited, let alone their ability to express themselves. The requirements of the new curriculum standard for the first and second grades in written expression are: to be interested in writing, to pay attention to the things around them, to write what they want to say, and to write about imaginary things.
For the topic of loving the motherland, it is not easy for students to be able to say a few words, and it is really a duck to write a 400-word essay. Therefore, this kind of essay solicitation to first- and second-grade students is actually forcing teachers to fake. The reality is that the teacher either writes it himself or sorts it out from the Internet, writes the student's name, and writes that he or she is the instructor.
Patriotic education is a serious matter, and it is necessary to give full consideration to the laws of students' cognitive development, so as to achieve good results, otherwise it may be counterproductive. Asking a first-grader to write a 400-word essay is counterproductive.
It would be good for first- and second-year students to be able to talk about their knowledge of the motherland, to know that they should love their country, and to be proud of the great achievements of the motherland. But if a student is forced to do something he can't do, he may have rebellious feelings and misunderstandings.