The primary education in ancient China was mainly private school education, and it took private school teachers more than a year to let their children pass the literacy barrier. The learning method is also very simple, that is, children can learn more than 2,000 words by reciting and reading literacy textbooks such as The Amethyst, Hundred Family Names and Qian Wen Zi. Reading training began after literacy, that is, reading a lot of classic works, and then being taught by teachers after proficiency, which was called "opening lectures" in ancient times.

Why did ancient literacy education have such a magical effect? As long as you carefully understand the literacy textbooks used in ancient times, you can find the mystery.

From Shi Shuan Pian in Zhou Dynasty, Cang Xie Pian in Qin Dynasty, Ji Li Pian, Fan Jiang Pian, Jijiu Pian in Western Han Dynasty, Qian Wen Zi in Southern and Northern Dynasties, Meng Xue in Tang Dynasty, Three Amethyst and Hundred Family Names in Song Dynasty, Ming Dynasty.

1, phonological positioning: The above textbooks are all written in rhyme. The ancients realized long ago that the sound characteristics of Chinese characters are one word and one sound, and each sound has rhyme. It is precisely because of the rhyme of Chinese characters that Chinese characters can be arranged neatly and rhyme evenly. From The Book of Songs more than two thousand years ago to Han Fu, Tang Poetry, Song Ci and Yuan Qu, China's language and writing reached the highest artistic level, in which the rhyme of Chinese characters played a decisive role. Without phonology, it is almost impossible to open the door of ancient culture and education in China. Therefore, cultivating children's sense of rhyme is the most important link in learning Chinese characters, which is why almost all ancient children's textbooks rhyme.

The ancients used rhyme for a second reason. Modern psychology believes that rhyme is the oldest and most effective memory method, and the history of many nationalities in the world has been handed down in the form of poetry.

2, four words and one sentence: literacy textbooks are generally four words, and some are three words. There are nine authoritative literacy textbooks of 10 mentioned above, all of which are four words and one sentence, and only Saint Amethyst is three words and one sentence. Why use four words and one sentence? This is very particular.

The process of children learning language is the process of training pronunciation. Because their muscles for controlling sound are underdeveloped, they usually read no more than four syllables at a time. Experiments have proved that there is a great difference between children aged six or seven who read more than five syllables and those who read less than four syllables, and the ancients have long realized this.

3. Chinese Encyclopedia of Literature: Ancient literacy textbooks are written according to the knowledge that children should master, which can be said to be all-encompassing, mainly including astronomy, geography, human relations, morality, history, farming, sacrifice, education and so on. Let children learn lifelong beneficial knowledge in the process of learning Chinese characters. There are three realms in learning Chinese characters. One is to learn Chinese characters by word, just like learning Chinese characters with a dictionary. Second, you should learn both words and sentences, just like taking article study words; The third is to learn Chinese characters, sentences and knowledge, which is the highest realm of ancient Chinese characters.

From the form, we can see that the ancients also read with words, but the literacy of the ancients with words is different from that of us today.

The characters are completely different, which is the fourth rule of ancient literacy textbooks and the most difficult rule for us to do.

4. Concentrate on literacy without repeating words: more than 90% of modern Chinese textbooks are invalid and repetitive, and the ancients just found a new way to solve this problem. The "three thousand" mentioned earlier includes * * * three-character scripture 16 16, * * * hundred family names with 576 words, and * * thousand words 1000 words. Together with "three thousand", there are 366 Chinese characters.

When we apply the basic principles of modern physiology, psychology, linguistics and pedagogy to study the above-mentioned textbooks and teaching methods of ancient Chinese characters, we will find that they are very consistent with children's cognitive laws:

The first is the teaching material. The ancients have long discovered that Chinese characters are like scattered beads, and learning one word at a time is very clumsy. We must string the scattered pearls with the thread of justice in order to learn. Formally, it is necessary to form eight-character rhyme, form four words, divide the two words into segments, and set up single-character sounds. In this way, each Chinese character will be fixed in a unique sound flow, shape flow and meaning flow. Psychology has proved that when meaningless memory materials are arranged according to syllable rhythm, the memory efficiency can be improved by at least 10 times, and even higher if meaning is added. This is the secret of ancient literacy textbooks.

Look at the teaching methods again. The characteristic of children's memory is to input the whole first and then refine it gradually. The ancients realized this long ago. First of all, they used the characteristics of children's strong image memory ability to memorize thousands of words of texts. At this time, children's perception of glyphs has reached 60% to 70%. With a little training and reading, they can divide sentences into words and identify them separately. This text-sentence-word-word sequence is obviously from whole to scattered, which is in line with the characteristics of children's thinking in images. The order of word-word-sentence-text in modern literacy teaching is from scattered to whole, which accords with the characteristics of adult abstract thinking.

Practice has proved that the ancient literacy method is unique, ingenious and reasonable, and it is much easier for children to learn and the effect is much better. Because Chinese characters are ideograms, you must know a certain number of words before you can start reading and writing. Therefore, most of the literacy teaching in past dynasties advocated that literacy should be given priority to first, and then reading should be given priority to.

Wang Yun, who wrote the literacy textbook Qiuzi, said in the Law of Teaching Children: "Literacy is the first thing to raise, so you don't have to study hard. I can read two thousand words and read books. " Cui Xuegu also said in "Young Training": "Don't teach easily when training. If you can read ten thousand words, you can teach it by post-law. "

Mr. Zhang Zhigong, a famous contemporary educator, summed up the experience of centralized literacy teaching in traditional Chinese teaching in "A Preliminary Study of Traditional Chinese Education": "The first step of previous literacy teaching was to teach children to concentrate on literacy for 2,000 words in a short time, and then gradually teach them to read. At this stage of centralized literacy, the main task is to teach children to read. As for how to say and use each word, the requirements are very low, and it can be said that there is no requirement at all. During this period, children were also taught to write, but the progress of writing was inconsistent with the progress of literacy, that is, they were not required to write anything. This is the basic method of traditional centralized literacy teaching. "

Mr. Lin also said in Gan Kun Zai: "The main feature of Chinese is the second-level word formation with monosyllabic words as the main word, which determines that our literacy education does not need to be carried out as long as pinyin, but it is best to concentrate on it in a short time."

Therefore, the ancients asked children to concentrate on learning about 2000 Chinese characters and then teach them to read, which contained profound educational ideas.