1. What is the significance of learning classical Chinese?
1. Understand history, learn ancient culture, appreciate ancient literature, and study ancient civilization.
2. The role of learning classical Chinese is also to pass on Chinese culture. It is the responsibility of every Chinese to pass on an ancient civilization.
3. Learning classical Chinese can help improve people’s ability to choose words, form sentences, refine words and reading skills, and enhance literary accomplishment.
4. Good classical Chinese writing can delight people’s spirits, enrich their cognition, and sometimes inspire them.
5. By studying classical Chinese, you can gain guidance from the experience of your ancestors, learn from the wisdom of your ancestors, and experience life from the sighs of your ancestors.
Extended information:
How to learn classical Chinese:
1. To understand the central idea:
Classical Chinese Reading is also reading, so we must first figure out what the central idea is? Who and what things are the articles about? What was the cause, process, and result of the incident? If it is an argumentative essay, you need to know what the author's core point of view is? What are the arguments?
2. Divide levels and structures:
For classical Chinese, it is precisely through dividing levels to help understand the idea and structure of the article, so as to improve the understanding of the material and reduce the error rate .
3. Dare to translate literally:
Literal translation means direct translation. In daily study, you should practice more literal translation to help improve your confidence in reading and understanding classical Chinese.
4. Read a few times:
"Read a book a hundred times, and its meaning will become apparent", which means that when you encounter a classical Chinese text that you don't understand or understand, you might as well read it first Don't read the question, calm down and read the article a few times, and you may be able to find inspiration for solving the problem.
Sogou Encyclopedia - Classical Chinese is a treasure of Chinese culture 2. The practical significance of learning classical Chinese is about 300 words
Learning the practical significance of classical Chinese should combine the knowledge of classical Chinese with the humanistic ideas contained in the text , aesthetic value, and organically unify the emotions, situations, and language in classical Chinese, allowing us to cultivate our sentiments, enrich our knowledge, enhance our aesthetics, and cultivate our understanding of classical Chinese and our initiative in learning while mastering classical Chinese and reading and writing methods. sex.
1. Understand the relationship between the long history and practical significance of classical Chinese. In the process of creating the history of civilization for more than 5,000 years, the Chinese nation has left volumes of immortal chapters through the hard work of generations of literati.
These works can be described as profound and profound to us later scholars, but they cause great learning difficulties because of their age. In addition to the difference in grammatical structure, another main reason is that we have difficulty understanding the historical background of classical Chinese and the profound truth contained in it.
It requires us not to just learn from word explanations, grammatical structures, and chapter layout, but also to go through the background of the times when the work was produced as detailed and vividly as possible, and to enter the era when the article was produced, so that we can learn from it. I have the feeling of being at the scene, so I can understand why the author is angry and sighing, and I have the urge to explore how the author narrates and demonstrates. We should also be sensible, talk about the past and the present, integrate the emotions and reasoning expressed in classical Chinese into our own state of mind, appreciate the beauty of its language, appreciate its thoughts and emotions arising from events, and the literati who have endured through the ages and have influenced the present. thoughts, and then understand the historical and cultural accumulation and practical significance contained in the article.
2. Understand the relationship between the profoundness and vividness of classical Chinese. The splendid classical literature shows us the unique value of our country's ancient history and culture, reflects the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, formed a swaying literary style, and created an unparalleled rich and beautiful national language.
After we have a certain ability of image thinking and aesthetic taste, we should fully experience the artistic conception and beauty of ancient literature with both text and quality, and both form and spirit. The methods are: (1) *** recitation.
Use sound to convey emotions and express both emotions, so that you can integrate yourself into the artistic realm created by the author and experience the emotions and situations contained in the work; (2) Situational feelings. There are many chapters in middle school classical Chinese essays, all involving the famous places and historic sites of the motherland, such as Yueyang Tower, Tengwang Pavilion, Shizhong Mountain, Xiaoshitan, Lantan, etc. Through the appreciation of the content, we should understand the richness and variety of life in the author's writings and enjoy the beauty of nature. Beautiful scenery, and how to use language to describe life, turning the ancient "love and scenery" into a vivid situation that can be seen before the eyes, heard by the ears, and thought through in the mind, and then feel the artistic conception of the work, and achieve the goal of transforming the deep into the simple. , the learning effect of turning virtual reality into reality.
3. Clarify the relationship between the classical Chinese learning process and life enlightenment. The purpose of selecting a large number of classical Chinese texts in middle school texts is not only to cultivate our preliminary ability to read classical Chinese texts, but also to enable us to learn to appreciate excellent classical literary works, absorb excellent cultural and moral cultivation from them, and shape a perfect personality.
If you can not be afraid of the difficult language in the learning process, but actively integrate yourself into the "beautiful, intelligent and interesting" learning environment created by the teacher, and integrate yourself into the "friendly, helpful and happy" "The teacher-student interpersonal relationship stimulates the subjective initiative of one's own learning, absorbs historical and humanistic ideas, pays attention to one's own value orientation, "translates the text into feelings" and "uses analysis to promote evaluation", so that you will be able to reflect the direct beauty with excellent works , profound philosophy, and ideological sparks to enlighten yourself to establish a correct outlook on life and values, and to develop your own excellent qualities of persistent pursuit of truth, career, and perfect personality. 3. What is the value of ancient Chinese writing
The teaching value of ancient Chinese is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Cognitive function - culture China is one of the four ancient civilizations in the world. , is also one of the birthplaces of mankind. Over the past five thousand years, through the creation and accumulation of generations of descendants of the Yan and Huang Dynasties, Chinese culture has gone through many vicissitudes, but it has continued endlessly. Its connotation is rich and colorful, broad and profound. Joseph Needham, a British expert on the history of science and technology, once listed China's contributions to the world in more than 100 aspects and believed that many ancient civilizations originated from China. Value
2. Cultivation function - educational value
In early 1988, 75 Nobel Prize winners declared in Paris: If mankind wants to survive in the 21st century, it must look back 2,500 years years to absorb the wisdom of Confucius. We should be clearly aware that dialectical criticism inherits the excellent cultural traditions of the Chinese nation and carries forward the national spirit and is of great significance to cultivating new people with four talents. Today, how to improve students' moral cultivation has received great attention.
3. Infection function - aesthetic value
Education is a kind of aesthetic education. Literary education should provide people with rich aesthetic experience and cultivate an aesthetic soul through the cultivation of literature. The popular poetry and prose have been loved by readers of all ages and are very suitable for cultivating students' aesthetic ability. Study these ancient poems and appreciate the beauty of life, nature, emotion, art, and language reflected in the works. Under the influence of beautiful works, you can receive education in beauty, thereby cultivating and improving students' aesthetic ability and taste. 4. What are the benefits of learning classical Chinese?
1. Why should we learn classical Chinese: 1. Inherit the excellent traditional culture and carry forward the national spirit.
Learning classical Chinese is an important way to inherit Chinese culture, carry forward the national spirit, and improve one's own quality. 2. Promote modern Chinese learning and improve Chinese language proficiency.
Ancient Chinese is the foundation and "source" of modern Chinese, and modern Chinese is the inheritance and development of ancient Chinese. Studying classical works and absorbing vital and expressive ancient languages ??is an important way to improve Chinese language proficiency.
2. What are the uses of classical Chinese: 1. Cultivate a variety of abilities and improve aesthetic literacy. 2. Classical Chinese has beautiful language, neat rhythm and harmonious tone. Regular reading not only cultivates the sense of language, but also improves memory ability.
3. Although classical Chinese is difficult to understand due to language barriers, era barriers and ideological barriers, it can exercise and improve students' understanding and analytical and critical abilities, thereby forming dialectical materialism. point of view. 1. What is classical Chinese: Classical Chinese is a written language in ancient China, which mainly includes written language based on the spoken language in the pre-Qin period.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, items used to record text had not yet been invented. Bamboo slips, silk and other items were used to record text. Silk was expensive, bamboo slips were bulky and the number of words recorded was limited. In order to be able to " If you want to write down more things on a "one volume" bamboo slip, you need to delete unimportant words. Later, when "paper" was used on a large scale, the ruling class's habit of using "official documents" for their correspondence had been finalized, and the ability to use "classical Chinese" had evolved into a symbol of reading and literacy.
After the 20th century, in China, the status of classical Chinese was gradually replaced by vernacular. Classical Chinese is a relative of vernacular. It is characterized by writing based on words, focusing on allusions, parallel antithesis, neat rhythm and no use of punctuation. It includes a variety of literary styles such as policy, poetry, lyrics, music, eight-legged essay, parallel prose and ancient prose.
In order to facilitate reading and understanding, classical Chinese texts in modern books are generally marked with punctuation marks. 2. Introduction to classical Chinese sentence patterns: Classical Chinese sentence patterns are basically the same as modern Chinese sentence patterns.
They are divided into single sentences and complex sentences, and they all have six major components: subject, predicate, object and definite adverbial complement. The word order of the sentences is also basically the same.
Of course, there are still differences between them. When learning classical Chinese sentence patterns, we must strive to grasp the differences between them and modern Chinese sentence patterns. Although the sentence forms of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese are basically the same, some special sentence patterns have emerged because some content words in classical Chinese are used differently from modern Chinese.
If you want to learn classical Chinese well, correctly understand the meaning of sentences, and understand the content of the article, you must master the special sentence patterns of classical Chinese. The special sentence patterns in classical Chinese that we often talk about are judgmental sentences, omitted sentences, inversion sentences, passive sentences and fixed sentence patterns.
There are not many truly effective "readings". Some are readings with unclear purposes, some are ineffective readings, and some only listen to readings by famous experts, without reading by students, and there is no reading by teachers. Effective reading is for students to learn to read. The purpose is to feel the charm of classical Chinese while reading, cultivate the sense of language of classical Chinese while reading, and understand the content of the text through reading. Teachers must dare to model reading, lead students to read, and effectively guide students' reading. Excessive pursuit of the so-called beautiful reading is a A very popular mistake is also a misunderstanding and departure from the rules of learning classical Chinese. Not paying attention to reading and trying to rely on so-called word training and grammatical knowledge to strengthen accumulation is an act of seeking fish from a tree. Some teachers say that this is all forced by the college entrance examination. In fact, this approach cannot really improve the ability to take classical Chinese exams. What's more, in the current college entrance examination papers, how many companies are testing ancient Chinese knowledge and content words and function words that are divorced from the language environment? 2. Text understanding is the basic task of classical Chinese teaching, but attaching importance to text understanding does not mean that the teacher must implement every sentence. Cultivating students' classical Chinese reading ability is the main purpose of classical Chinese teaching. Text understanding is not the only task of classical Chinese teaching. But it is indeed a basic task. However, it must be emphasized that text understanding is not the purpose of teaching. Cultivating students' reading ability in classical Chinese is the purpose. After listening to one of my classes, a teacher said to me: Teaching classical Chinese sentence by sentence With cross-talk, students learn effectively; without cross-talk, students' minds are blank. It should be said that this teacher said a lot of what the teacher wanted to say. Cross-talk, word by word, sentence by sentence, is still a common phenomenon in classical Chinese teaching. We We do not simply deny the value of the cross-talk method in classical Chinese teaching, but the harm of using the cross-talk method in teaching cannot be underestimated. First of all, it leads to inefficiency in teaching. In any classroom where cross-talk is used, half or even three parts of the content taught by the teacher are lost. Two-thirds are already included in the annotations, and a lot of content is of no value to students. The second is that it stifles students' interest in learning classical Chinese and eliminates students' initiative in learning. In cross-lecture teaching, the teacher implements every word and translates every sentence. , the students barely think. 6. Classical Chinese Exercises, a compulsory course for high school Chinese published by the People's Education Press
Regarding the teaching of classical Chinese reading, the new high school curriculum has two requirements. First, you must be able to understand the meaning of words and sentences with the help of annotations and reference books, and understand Article content; understand and sort out the meaning or usage of common classical Chinese content words, classical Chinese function words, and classical Chinese sentence patterns, and focus on drawing inferences from one example in reading practice; recite a certain number of famous articles. The second is to understand the Chinese national spirit contained in the works, in order to form a certain lay the foundation for the traditional cultural heritage; learn to understand the content value of ancient works from the perspective of historical development and draw national wisdom from them; use modern concepts to examine the works and evaluate their positive significance and historical limitations. In other words, the teaching of classical Chinese must first overcome the Language barriers. Therefore, mastering common words in classical Chinese and understanding word meanings and sentence patterns have always been the focus of classical Chinese reading teaching. Reading, recitation, induction and comparison exercises of word meanings and sentence patterns, as well as ancient and modern translation exercises are the key to improving classical Chinese reading ability. Important means. According to the overall arrangement of the compulsory course textbooks, this unit also requires learning the reading method of summarizing and abstracting. Summarizing the main points and extracting the essence is an important link in reading. Summarizing the meaning of a paragraph and summarizing the center are important in primary school and junior high school. I have been trained in reading teaching. In high school, the difficulty of texts has increased, and the requirements for reading comprehension have increased. It is not just about summarizing the meaning of a paragraph or summarizing the center. It is about one sentence or several sentences, a paragraph or several paragraphs, and You must be able to summarize relevant parts of content correctly and skillfully as needed. Summarizing key points must be based on understanding the ideological content of the article. Reading carefully and clarifying ideas are the prerequisites for appropriate summary; grasp the key sentences , is also of great significance to ensure the accuracy of the summary. The summary of the main points of the content is inseparable from certain analysis. It is necessary to distinguish the outline and details of things, and be good at grasping the connections between related things and grasping their similarities or differences. .The analysis of article content is inseparable from the mastery of background knowledge and the understanding of expression methods.
7. Is the core value of classical Chinese "Word" or "Wen"
Is the core value of Classical Chinese "Word" or "Wen"? Mr. Xiong Fangfang and Qian Menglong once put forward this view in 1997: "What is the biggest shortcoming of current classical Chinese teaching? In a nutshell: there is 'language' but no 'wen'."
" Classical Chinese is first of all "literary", not an arbitrary collection of classical Chinese words and phrases. "And 16 years later, we are still standing still.
I have always believed that the "word" of classical Chinese cannot be ignored. It is the bridge we use to reach the other shore. Without it, we can only face each other across the sea; however, our purpose The ground is not a bridge, but the other shore at the end of the bridge - the hearts and thoughts of the ancients. That is what our tutor, Teacher Li Lihua, said: "The ultimate goal of reading classical Chinese is to know what the ancients were thinking."
I think this is the fundamental purpose of reading classical Chinese. In today's life, we no longer use classical Chinese when speaking and writing. The "language" of classical Chinese no longer means much to our lives.
The soul and breath carried by those "words" have a truly deep-rooted relationship with us - there, we can find the life code of a nation and even every individual in this nation. This is the core value of classical Chinese and its most eternal value.
"The real purpose of teaching should be to enable students to learn something truly valuable. What is something truly valuable? It is the Chinese language that we must teach in order and implement it in a down-to-earth manner. Common sense, pronunciation of Chinese characters, synonyms of ancient and modern words, idioms, clear semantics, familiarity with reading, recitation, and dictation? The truly valuable thing is the eternal thing contained in it: the ideal ethical concepts of the Chinese people” (Liu Hua’s “What should be used to “conquer” students”).
I do not deny the role of "words". On the contrary, I attach great importance to basic things in classical Chinese teaching. I will teach students about ancient cultural knowledge topics from time to time, and I will also teach students about the grammar of modern Chinese and the grammar of ancient Chinese in great detail. However, this kind of work is not necessary for every class. , will be emphasized and examined in subsequent text teaching to help students review the past, learn new things, and apply what they have learned.
This kind of work should be done solidly in the first semester of high school. I don’t deny sentence-by-sentence translation either.
Some texts need to be written steadily and implemented word for word. But don’t do this with every text.
No method can be regarded as a standard. For education, the only constant truth is change.
Breaking the "natural order" of the text and using the teacher's wisdom to re-deconstruct, design and weave it is the most beautiful "change" in itself. Because after all, to translate a text word for word, students only need to use reference books and can do it without relying on the teacher.
So what is the value of a teacher’s existence? I still have to mention Professor Sun Shaozhen’s words again: “I have hated repeating things that students know at a glance in the Chinese class. I have hated it since I was a middle school student. From then on, I determined that one day I would be a Chinese teacher. To tell something that students feel but cannot express, or think they understand at a glance, but actually know nothing about."
This is one of the values ??of our existence. I say "one" because it is of existential value to "tell" "something that students feel but cannot express, or think they know at a glance, but actually know nothing about." reflect.
(There are other manifestations. For example: sometimes we don’t need to “tell it out” ourselves, but find ways to “force it out”—explode it from the students’ own hearts.)
In other words, teachers must be able to stand at a high point, grasp the overall situation of this text, and make unique discoveries. We should be able to help students open a window and see the light; push aside a cloud and see the sun.
I also absolutely agree with breaking through key words in class. This is of course a must. Although the annotations in the textbook are very detailed, students with different levels have different understandings. Moreover, even for students with very good levels, teachers still need to guide students to pay attention to some part-of-speech conjugations, polysemy, special sentence patterns, etc. Tongjiazi and so on.
Even if the textbook has already explained it, the teacher still needs to extract it and emphasize it, or summarize and organize it, relate and compare the old and new knowledge, strengthen memory, and form a knowledge system. I just want to say: Don’t solve the problem of “language” out of the context of “literary”.
It is necessary to cultivate students' ability to understand "words" according to the "literary" environment, to correlate the information provided by each sentence, and to enter the students' emotional magnetic field and thinking track, so that they can use known deductions After long-term accumulation and developing a sense of language, when they encounter an unfamiliar text, they can basically make accurate inferences about the "language" they have never met based on their understanding of the text. Without "words", "wen" has no beauty; without "words", "words" become a pile of rubble.
Classical Chinese is still an article after all, and it should be read as an article, not as a combination of content words, function words and sentence patterns. Only in this way can "literature" be achieved and "words" fulfilled.
Ekman said: "Art must speak to the world through a complete body." Every text is a living body with a soul present. If we only study its hair or nails, we will miss the real meaning. Something of value.
Therefore, when teaching classical Chinese, we should still talk about some things and not talk about them. Sometimes, it is also a reading method to not ask for a deep understanding. Temporarily retaining some language barriers sometimes does not prevent us from understanding the main idea of ??the article. Being able to grasp the general idea without asking for a thorough explanation is sometimes a manifestation of ability.
What’s more, the overall feeling can often lead to partial understanding. 8. A brief discussion on how to create a lively and efficient junior high school classical Chinese classroom
Classical Chinese teaching is an important part of middle school Chinese reading. It plays the role of inheriting the excellent national culture, educating students in ideological and moral education, and helping students understand ancient society. and better mastery of modern Chinese.
The new middle school Chinese textbook of the People's Education Press, which was put into use in the fall of 2000, has increased the amount of reading of ancient poetry and classical Chinese. The new syllabus proposes that "reciting ancient poetry and simple classical Chinese can be understood with the help of annotations and reference books." Content, recite a certain number of famous articles" requirements. Compared with the past, two major features have emerged: first, the amount of reading for classical Chinese teaching in junior high schools has increased; second, the learning requirements for students have been lowered, focusing only on reading, reciting and understanding of basic content, while focusing on the meaning of function words and There are no specific requirements for inflection of parts of speech, special sentence patterns, etc.
But if you don’t understand and master the words and sentence patterns, how can you understand and apply them? I think this is a teaching contradiction. How to break through the difficulties in classical Chinese learning for junior high school students and effectively solve the contradiction between "seeking latitude for more quantity" and "low standard for rough reading" will become a major focus of our teaching research.
Based on the above considerations, I will start from the following aspects to improve the efficiency of classical Chinese classroom teaching. 1. Understand the teaching materials thoroughly and establish goals. Correctly understanding the literal meaning of words and sentences in classical Chinese is one of the foundations and important goals of classical Chinese teaching, but it is not the only goal.
In addition, students must also conduct appropriate appreciation and analysis of the article. Most of the classical Chinese texts selected into the textbooks have a strong literary character.
The characters’ thoughts and personalities, the author’s attitude towards life, ideal pursuit, thoughts and feelings all have an impact on the formation of students’ outlook on life, values ??and aesthetic tastes. Such as "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain", "Inscription on the Humble House", and "The Theory of Love and Lotus", their literary value is self-evident.
Therefore, in teaching, we must first determine the teaching objectives. While guiding students to master the basic knowledge of classical Chinese, we must also allow students to make appropriate appreciation and analysis of the works. Appreciating the emotions in the text, imagining the scenes in the text, comprehending the principles in the text, and feeling the elegance in the text are the highest realms pursued in classical Chinese teaching.
2. Use clever strategies to stimulate interest. Students in the first grade of junior high school are new to the study of classical Chinese and find it difficult to learn. "Interest is the best teacher." When students are interested in learning, they will be motivated and will change from passive learning to active learning.
Therefore, when new lessons are introduced, it is particularly important to stimulate students’ interest in learning. The lively introduction of new lessons can prompt students to enter a positive and pleasant learning state and alleviate students’ fear of learning classical Chinese. Promote students' understanding and accumulation of classical Chinese words and contents. According to the characteristics of classical Chinese, the following methods can be tried: 1. Method of introducing idioms and aphorisms. There are many idioms from junior high school classical Chinese texts. For this type of classical Chinese teaching, if corresponding idioms are used to introduce them, good teaching results will be achieved.
In junior high school classical Chinese, there are many articles that can be introduced in this way, such as "Sun Quan's Encourage to Learn" with admiration, and "The Story of Peach Blossom Spring" in the paradise of paradise. In addition, there are many famous aphorisms in junior high school classical Chinese. Using them to introduce can not only deepen students' understanding of the text, but also strengthen the accumulation of language.
2. Story introduction method Using vivid stories and beautiful legends to introduce can also arouse students' interest in learning and enable students to deepen their understanding of the text. The story used for introduction can be the story narrated in the text itself, or it can be other stories related to the text content.
For example: when teaching "Wolf", "Float Skills", "Wei Xue" and other classical Chinese texts with strong storytelling, teachers can tell students stories first, and then guide students to learn the corresponding classical Chinese texts, and then implement them Teaching of words and sentences. For example, when teaching "The Story of Yueyang Tower", the story of Teng Zijing building the Yueyang Tower can be introduced, and when teaching "The Story of a Master", the story of Liu Bei visiting the thatched cottage three times and Zhuge Liang working hard can be introduced to expand students' horizons and deepen their understanding of the text content.
3. Using pictures and media to stimulate students' interest can mobilize students' existing knowledge reserves related to the text content to introduce the text, review the past and learn new things, and stimulate students' interest in learning, such as using the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River in geography knowledge Import "Three Gorges"; you can download pictures related to the text from the Internet, use multimedia means to read the article with classical music, or use multimedia means to directly display the audiovisual and picture content related to the text to create scenes; give full play to students' active participation Take the initiative and allow students to use online resources and related books to find information related to the text during preview. 3. Highlight the key points and strengthen reading aloud. The introduction of a new lesson in a lively and lively way can only be the beginning. During the specific stage of guided reading, it is necessary to strengthen the reading and highlight the key points of learning, and avoid seeking perfection and detail, and be comprehensive.
At the same time, we must give full play to the main role of students, completely abandon the teacher's "full class" teaching method, and allow students to think, discuss, and speak more, and fully mobilize students' enthusiasm for learning. In particular, students' reading training is strengthened, and flexible and diverse methods are adopted to allow students to read and recite.
Search by category of journal articles in the journal library. The ancients said: "Read a book a hundred times, and its meaning will appear by itself." This means that you can understand the meaning of the article by reading it repeatedly. Reading is still important for learning classical Chinese. method. In teaching, we must not only pay attention to classroom reading, but also pay attention to extracurricular reading.
Classroom reading can be divided into three steps: first, teacher model reading. Teachers read texts with emotion and emotion, which not only allows students to remember difficult words and their pronunciation, sentence pauses, and rhythm, but more importantly, it can stimulate students' interest in reading and improve students' cognitive abilities.
The teacher's accurate and expressive model reading, and then using different changes in stress, intonation, pauses, speaking speed, volume, etc., unknowingly bring students into the beautiful realm of the article and make them learn. interest and motivation. The second step is for students to read aloud.
On the basis of the teacher's model reading, students should read it repeatedly. When reading aloud, students can be asked to outline the key words and famous sayings in the text while reading, and focus on memorization; on the other hand, they can concretely perceive the text. content, combined with the context to deeply understand the meaning of difficult words and sentences from the sentence structure and context, and grasp the author's views, attitudes and ideological tendencies reflected in the article.
Again, students read.
Reciting is to read aloud repeatedly on the basis of understanding the meaning of the article in order to become familiar with it. Scientific and targeted guidance should be provided to students in reciting to avoid mechanical and repetitive reading without purpose.
Chant.