READING OUT ALOUD
Audio files of Chinese texts read by well-known broadcasters are now available for students and teachers. Fang Aiqing reports.
Some 150 million domestic elementary and middle school students and more than 9 million of their teachers are now going to have their Chinese texts read by well-known broadcasters as demonstrations for reading aloud.
The first 100 audio files, covering famous Chinese poems and prose from both ancient and modern times, as well as translations of classic Western stories, were released on May 19.
Teachers, students and parents can access the audio files online and via their smartphones for free, and more pieces will soon be made available.
More than 70 young, middle-aged and elderly broadcasters from China Central Television, China National Radio and China Radio International participated in the project.
Meanwhile, experts from the broadcasting and Chinese language teaching fields have gone over every one of the files to check them for accuracy.
The Chinese TextbooksReading Library for elementary and middle school students, jointly launched by the China Media Group and Ministry of Education, aims to help Chinese children with their Mandarin.
Ya Kun, 76, a renowned broadcaster, says that the project will not only benefit students and teachers, but will also be helpful to those who want to improve their Mandarin.
The first batch of audio files will include excerpts from The Analects of Confucius, wellknown pieces by Lu Xun, a leading figure in modern Chinese literature, and Western fairy tales such as The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen.
Yu Fang, 65, a participating broadcaster, says they read the texts for children so that they will be able to understand them at once.
“For us broadcasters, it is the expression of feelings rather than the pronunciation that we hope the children will get,” says Yu.
At the launch of the audio project, Fang Ming, 77, a broadcaster, read The Sight of Father’s Back, a famous prose piece by Chinese author Zhu Ziqing, in which Zhu recalls his father sending him on a train from home to Beijing.
In the piece, there is a description of Zhu’s father crossing the railway tracks just to buy some oranges for him. Listening to Fang reading the passage is a moving experience.
Lu Jing, a professor at the Communication University of China, and a former broadcaster, says: “Such reading demonstrations allow us to fully appreciate the vividness of Chinese language and culture.”
Yao Xishuang, the executive deputy director of the Caring for the Next Generation Committee of the Ministry of Education, and a state superintendent, says that while traditional Chinese teaching focuses more on writing, there is less importance given to expression, and the project aims to balance both objectives simultaneously.
Meanwhile, an official report says that the penetration rate of Mandarin is not the same in East and West China, or in urban and rural areas.
So, while more than 90 percent of people living in large cities speak Mandarin, only about 40 percent of people in the countryside and minority regions do so.
And, in some ethnic minority communities, the penetration rate is less than 20 percent.
Mi Yaniu, a broadcaster who used to be a primary school teacher, says that Chinese language teaching at the grassroots level is particularly dependent on reading aloud.
“So, if Chinese language teachers in rural areas are not able to do this (speak standard Mandarin and read aloud properly), neither will the children.”
Yu Ying, the principal of Songlin Primary School in Fuzhou, in East China’s Jiangxi province, says that the audio files are a great help for rural teachers and their students.
Such reading demonstrations allow us to fully appreciate the vividness of Chinese language and culture.”
Lu Jing,