Should elementary school students learn this English font? No!

Hello!

To be honest, the writing of the third grade students, whether it is Chinese or English, is really not much beautiful.

why? This may also have a certain relationship with the educational development process.

1. What went wrong with the teaching of writing?

In ancient times, such as the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Writing with a brush is almost the only means of writing. The learning content of the students at school is also very narrow, except for the enlightenment reading materials, it is almost the Four Books and Five Classics. In the past, learning was a kind of slow life, writing with correct strokes and strokes. Brother Ling has never seen a child write in regular script and be able to fly like a dragon and a phoenix. At the same time, at that time, there were far fewer books to read than now. In contrast, writing (writing) took up a large part of learning, and even "learning" was greater than "learning".

But now, if we observe our classroom teaching and extracurricular learning, we will find that students really need to learn a lot. Correspondingly, the time for students to write slowly and carefully is very limited, which leads to the following two situations.

(1) Too little time for writing>

In the English class of the third grade, when teaching letters, there is very little time to practice strokes (or even half-strokes, such as the letter b). In most cases, teachers just use writing as homework. The homework is arranged.

From what Brother Ling can hear and see, most of the elementary school English classes have almost no writing link. ——The teachers told Brother Ling very bluntly: "If writing is arranged, it will be too late to complete the teaching content."

Teacher, can you find a way to specially arrange a writing session? !

In some classes, there is indeed a writing link, which is usually arranged in the reading and writing section of teaching. When it is near the end of the class, the students write it in a hurry, and the teacher will show it right away—and usually there is no concern about the normativeness or Evaluation of aesthetics.

Well, in short, although teachers subjectively hope that students can write English well, in practice, except for the teaching of writing in the third grade, most of the attention paid to students' writing at other times is not implemented.

(2) Other learning activities occupy students' writing time>

Some current teaching concepts require students to spend a lot of time on reading. Brother Ling is not opposed to increasing the amount of reading. Reading is very important, useful books, naturally the more you read, the better. The concept of extensive reading is actually based on Western education and adult learning models. Students write a lot of content almost every day, but in adult work, except for writers, most people don't need to write much content.

Most of the world's written languages ​​use alphabets. Taking English as an example, as long as students can write 52 English characters well, the basic language can guarantee standard and beautiful writing. Chinese is different. There are more than 20 basic strokes written in horizontal and vertical strokes. Therefore, children need to practice writing slowly.

In the current primary school teaching, it has almost become a luxury to let children write slowly and standardize their writing.

As the academic burden of students increases, especially in upper primary and middle schools, students may need to face a lot of homework. Under such circumstances, it is impossible for students to write properly. (Do you still remember what Brother Ling said about writing calligraphy in regular script?) Students with poor handwriting skills can't write flamboyant characters, so they have to write with teeth and claws.

There are such problems in Chinese writing, and the same is true in English writing.

2. There is a problem with the teaching of English writing in our elementary school

But is it hopeless? Absolutely not! But, it's time for a change!

Let's take a look at the enviable fonts of the English composition of a middle school in Hebei.

(figure 1)

(figure 2)

(image 3)

Foreign children, what font did you practice at the beginning? Is such that:

(Figure 4 horizontal and vertical)

Advanced fonts look like this.

(Figure 5 slightly tilted)

This is why a middle school advocates the font used by students.

The last practice is cursive.

(Figure 6 The long tail behind each letter is connected to the next letter)

Such three processes are equivalent to children in our country practicing regular script first, then Xingkai, and then running script. Of course, they can write cursive script when they are perfect.

So, what is the handwritten font used by a well-known publishing house? Elegantly called "Italian script". Some letters (u, i, r, w, n, j, m, p, v, y) have a "slightly lifted" lead-in in the stroke, but they are actually written quickly Only then will it appear naturally.

(Figure 7 The font used in the teaching materials of a well-known publishing house)

However, none of the Italian cursive handwriting found by Ling Ge on the Internet is exactly the same as this font.

In fact, when Brother Ling was in junior high school (there were basically no English classes in elementary schools at that time), this font was used in junior high school English textbooks. Brother Ling doesn't know who wrote this font. Later, someone used scanners and other technologies to make this font into xumin font. Unfortunately, some letters are not standardized due to poor production technology, such as the lowercase letter p's slope is obviously problematic, and the thickness of the strokes is not uniform (such as the neck part of the letter j, letters o and v), letters The large curved hooks of y and g are inconsistent >.

In fact, among the fonts that Ling Ge could find for children's beginners' writing training, none of them were handwritten fonts like this.

Imagine that the font equivalent to the Chinese character "Xingkai" was used by junior high school students 30 years ago, but now it is used by elementary school beginners. Is this to let students jump from "regular script" to "xingkai" in one step?

3. Brother Ling's suggestions on English writing teaching in primary schools

1.> Arrange more time for students to standardize writing.

2.> Just like learning Chinese calligraphy, learning English writing also needs to be done step by step.

The following is a font for school teaching and writing provided by a British font company, which is divided into four stages.

(Figure 8)

For example, don't use fonts with Lead-in> at first. It is suggested that from the very beginning, you can use the fonts used by students in a middle school in Hebei, "more strokes are too much, and less strokes are too little".

Brother Ling personally recommends this one:

(Figure 5)

Of course, it is also possible to design a new font between this font and the font currently used in a well-known publishing house. And after proficiency, transition to the following way of writing:

(Figure 9)

(Figure 10)

3.> When teaching continuous writing, do not use a single letter, but use two letters, such as up,>

4.>Gradually reduce the number of lines in the writing auxiliary grid, and gradually remove the brackets according to the method of "four lines-two lines-one line-no lines", so that students can always write as much as possible Keep writing straight. In some places, starting from the fourth grade, there is only one horizontal line in the workbook for students, and the straightness of students' English writing plummets immediately.