Chinese Rhetoric and Writing - An Introduction for Language Teachers, 2012a

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Chapter 5 (vii) Bagu eight-legged essays and Shitie poems: Since the Southern Song and Early Yuan dynasties, the Shuyuan had evolved towards official or government institutions in terms of providing preparation courses for imperial examinations. In the Qing dynasty, there was a shift towards an “examination-oriented” curriculum centring around the bagu essays. Bagu essays were primarily based on Zhu Xi’s Collected Notes on the Four Books. Zhu Xi was regarded as the leader of the neo-Confucian school. Scholars in those days complained about the “shift” of the teaching focus in the Shuyuan, and some Shuyuan Shanzhang even regarded the bagu as “an enemy” ( ). However, since the civil service imperial examinations required it, they had to read and write these Neo-Confucian texts. Some Shuyuan took the reading of these “contemporary texts” as compulsory. The Shuyuan promoted the reading of around 100 Qing contemporary texts and some 20-30 Ming texts to help students learn how to write bagu essays appropriately. (viii) Natural science and technology: although the Shuyuan curriculum was heavily oriented towards the Classics and the Histories, there were also courses in natural sciences and in mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, biology (including medical science and agriculture). Nevertheless, the knowledge of these disciplines was taught primarily through the learning of Confucian classics, not as independent disciplines. For example, the “Shi Jing” (the Book of Songs) provides knowledge of biology, phenology, meteorology, and agricultural science. (Yang and Peng 16–21) THE TEACHING OF READING AND WRITING IN THE SHUYUAN The Shuyuan advocated learner autonomy or self-study. Lectures were only given by Shanzhang to the students two to three times per month. The remaining time would be for the students to engage themselves in self-study. The learning activities of the Shuyuan students comprised attending lectures and self-study. 98
Shuyuan and Chinese Writing Training and Practice One of the roles that Shuyuan would play was to monitor the students’ learning activities and progress. Unlike contemporary university students, who have more flexibility and freedom in determining their individual learning activities, the Shuyuan students had to record what they read on a daily basis into their learning schedule books. These schedule books were then carefully examined by the Shanzhang on a regular basis. The teaching of reading and writing in the Shuyuan was arranged in such a way that progressive training was implemented in three major stages, equivalent to the contemporary primary, secondary, tertiary and postgraduate education (Yang and Peng 22). During the first stage, students between the ages of 8-15 would spend seven to eight years learning eleven course books. These included the Xiaoxue (books on Chinese characters, etymology and phonology), the Daxue (classics and biographies), the Lun Yu (The Analects of Confucius), and Mengzi (The Book of Mencius). They also included the Five Books and the Spring and Autumn Annals. It should be noted that students at this stage were exposed to the reading of the Classics, regardless of how much of them they could understand. They would be required to read the texts aloud, copy the texts, and memorise the texts. There was not much creative writing involved at this stage, with “writing” often being interpreted as copying Chinese characters or texts. During the second stage, students between fifteen and twenty-two years of age would spend three to four years reading course books, such as Questions on the Great Learning, Collected Notes on the Analects, Collected Notes on Mencius, Questions on the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Five Classics. There were also the original classical texts that they had read during stage one, but with connotations and commentaries. Their learning styles were not very different from those for stage one, but they were required and expected to understand the major texts they were reading. They would still copy and read aloud as their major learning activities. They would then spend another two to three years (equivalent to contemporary tertiary education) focusing on the Tong Jian (Documents of Ancient Books), the Han Wen (texts and grammar), the Chu Ci (The Songs of Chu), and the Tong Dian (The Universal Encyclopedia of Statecraft). During this second stage, the students were not only expected to comprehend the texts that they had read during stage one, but also to start writing texts based closely on what they had read and comprehended. Reading and writing at this stage were integrated. The training of writing skills was particularly evident in the reading of texts and grammar sections. This training comprised analysing and understanding the discourse patterns and rules and the lexical and sentence grammar in the texts that students read. Intensive reading, instead of extensive reading, was emphasised at this stage, where the students were required to focus on reading one or two texts, by reading them over one hundred times. This differs 99
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CHINESE RHETORIC AND WRITING AN INT
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PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING Series Edit
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The WAC Clearinghouse, Fort Collins
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CHINESE RHETORIC AND WRITING: AN IN
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Introduction that there are more sp
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Introduction in Beijing, where he a
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Introduction Chapter 1 also demonst
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Introduction common, along with the
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12
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Chapter 1 called various branches o
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Chapter 1 plea, or speech, into eit
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Chapter 1 the temple and the hall,
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Chapter 1 were used to successively
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Chapter 1 from Emperor to subject,
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Chapter 1 getting confused, who soa
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Chapter 1 similarities of the advic
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Chapter 1 to create an environment
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2 THE LITERARY BACKGROUND AND RHETO
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Literary Background and Rhetorical
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Page 55 and 56: Literary Background and Rhetorical
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Chapter 8 Augustine (On Christian D
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Chapter 8 democratisation of the Un
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Chapter 8 virtually abandoned “in
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Chapter 8 everlasting truth. Dewey
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Chapter 8 We now turn to briefly re
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Chapter 8 Was BE an imperialist con
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Chapter 8 Wang defines double-faced
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9 PARTY POLITICS, THE CULTURAL REVO
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Party Politics, the Cultural Revolu
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Chapter 10 UNIVERSITY WRITING COURS
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Chapter 10 “explaining, expoundin
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Chapter 10 but a weak and incompati
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Chapter 10 writing process, for exa
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Chapter 10 and task for 2000 was a
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Chapter 10 writing compositions] is
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Chapter 10 common for non-Chinese m
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Conclusion BECAUSE x n +THEREFORE x
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Conclusion current lack of an accep
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Works Cited Chafe, Wallace L. “Gi
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Works Cited “Four Examination Ess
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Works Cited Kirkpatrick, Andy. “A
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Works Cited Ma, Zhengping. Advanced
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Works Cited Sun, Shaozhen. “Prefa
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Works Cited Yang, Ling, and David C
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NOTES This chronological division
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Chinese Rhetoric and Writing (biogr
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Chinese Rhetoric and Writing - An Introduction for Language Teachers, 2012a

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