This post has a Chinese version below. Feel free to test your Chinese by reading the Chinese version first!
Through four years of junior middle school, I came across three Chinese language teachers. In my first year of junior middle school, my Chinese teacher was Mrs. Ding, a woman with a keen, light and reposeful tongue. Her skill was enough to leave fresh students in awe. Mrs. Ding had her own rules to teach and manage students and these rules always worked well.
At our first class, she didn’t begin by teaching from the textbook like the other teachers; instead, she spent the entire class explaining her rules to us. Before studying new articles, we had to complete pre-reading tasks like looking up the pronunciation and definition of new words. Each group leader had to check the pre-reading of each group member. The group leaders then handed in the list of names to Mrs. Ding. Mrs. Ding asked students to write the pronunciation and definition of their words on the blackboard, while she checked up on each group personally. If you gave a wrong answer or had not finished your pre-reading tasks, sorry, but you had to stand at the front of classroom for the rest of class. This was no joke; these just were rules of pre-reading.
Learning Classical Chinese and ancient poetry was very important in junior middle school. For each piece we studied every student needed to know the author, relative literary information, and the definitions of words and phrases in classical Chinese, all of which were to be dictated with complete correctness. In order to avoid mistakes in the dictation, we used the ten-minute break before Chinese class to recite. Other students mocked us for this, but we couldn’t care less.
The last component of class was composition. Once a week we handed in a draft. Mrs. Ding would give feedbacks to us and then we would revise the drafts based on her suggestions. If Mrs. Ding still wasn’t happy with our drafts then we needed to revise them again. Sometimes we would revise three times before completing a composition. All of us learned Chinese carefully and did as the rules said.
Mrs. Ding rarely criticized us, and never resorted to physical punishment on us, though she was very good at staring. Maybe the other teachers thought this wouldn’t work, though it always worked on us. Our performance in class was excellent at that time. In the final examination, our class ranked number 1 in the city; even the student who got the highest score was in our class.
In my second year of junior middle school Mrs. Ding taught another class so we had a new teacher. Mr. Fu was our Chinese teacher for the next two years. He was a handsome young man and a bit of an idealist. We didn’t have much homework, reciting, or dictation any more. Mr. Fu’s expectations were gentler. Unlike the other teachers, Mr. Fu loved to show us how to appreciate literature from several perspectives. He asked students to act out scenes in plays or read aloud the highlight of articles. If he was in a good mood, he would write some pieces himself in different styles. Some were like a gentle rain in spring. Others were in a vigorous style like the wild wind in the fall.
He was a brilliant teacher and he was flexible when teaching composition. After we learned modern poetry, he asked us to compose a modern poem on a topic like “stars” or “youth.” At that age, we wouldn’t compose poetry in an examination, so most teachers did not teach how to write poetry. Mr. Fu was different. He not only inspired us to write a poem, but also picked three excellent works from among ours and read them aloud so we could appreciate them.
His flexible ideas also took form in the assignment of weekly journals. Each journal was unique. A good example was the journal of my deskmate, who was addicted to Kung Fu novels. His weekly journal was a long Kung Fu novel. I wrote two classical Chinese poems as my impression of A Dream of Red Mansion in my weekly journal. What really surprised me was that Mr. Fu wrote would always write feedback, sometimes more than three hundred words long.
There was passion and creation in Mr. Fu’s class. This made us excited; however, he ignored some basic and important knowledge in examination. Besides this, Mr. Fu was not strict as Mrs. Ding, and some students studied carelessly. After two years, at our final examination, we fell behind in our Chinese exam. The performance of our class was the second-last in the city; the only comfort was that the highest Chinese score was still in our class. As I said, Mr. Fu was a true idealist.
At the end of junior middle school there was a examination to enter senior middle school. Our performance would impact the reputation of our school, so a switch of Chinese teachers was a must.
Our new teacher, Mr. Hu, was also a man. Mr. Hu became famous for his severe style. He required us to prepare everything before his class. You couldn’t be late over three minutes, or you took a risk of being criticized. He never laughed in class, or even smiled. He also rarely showed a sense of humor. Once, he told us a story with a little humor. This was very rare in his class so we all laughed at the funny parts. The result was that Mr. Hu stared at us blankly. We knew he didn’t understand why we were laughing, so we stopped laughing before he could become upset.
Although he was strict, Mr. Hu was a upright and fair man. Most of us showed no dislike for him. Perhaps he was only a teacher to us, neither disgusting nor loveable.
Mr. Hu reminded us, it was important that our Chinese performance caught up with others in the city. At the key examination, we ranked third in our city and the highest score was still in our class. Performance and rank were just numbers, but they really made us change!
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Chinese Version: You can study the words from this post in Skritter.
三位老师，三种风格
在初中的四年学习中，遇到过三位语文老师。
刚上初一时，语文老师是一个姓丁的女教师，眼神犀利，语调沉稳，这样的形象足够威慑刚进初中的小孩子了。丁老师对教学和管理学生都很有自己的一套办法，而且这套办法屡试不爽。在第一堂语文课上，丁老师没有像其他老师一样开始上新课，而是用了整整一堂课的时间讲解她的上课规则。学习新课文前一定要预习，查清楚生字生词的读音，意思，组长课前要检查同学是否完成了预习，对于没完成的同学，应向老师汇报，而老师上课的第一件事是叫同学上黑板给生词注音，解释，与此同时，她将抽查一个小组的预习作业，叫哪个同学，抽查哪个小组，完全是随机的，如果写错了或者没完成作业，对不起，你就只能站在教室前面听一整堂课，没有侥幸，没有特殊，这只是关于预习的规则。初中的学习很重视文言文和古诗词，因此，同学们必须记住每个作者和诗人，以及相关的文学常识，记住一批常用文言文词语的解释，用法，所有的这些，都要默写，默写合格的标准是完全正确。最后的一块是作文，我们每个星期都要写一篇作文，完成草稿后，老师会修改和给出评语，同学们据此再修改，如果老师还不满意，则还需要修改，有时候，一篇作文得修改三次才最终完成了，常常是这篇作文尚未完全定稿，下篇作文又得开始打草稿了。大家都按照老师的规定，认真学习。为了避免默写时的错误，每当语文课上有默写时，课前十分钟的休息时间都用来背书，其他班的同学幸灾乐祸的看着我们，但我们则顾不了这么多。
丁老师很少骂人，更从不打人，惯用的批评手法是瞪眼，这在其他老师那里可能效果不好的招数在丁老师这里效果很好，大多数同学对丁老师都是又敬又爱，我们的语文成绩很好，期末考试的时候，我们班的成绩排为全市第一名，而且全市的语文最高分也是在我们班。
初二的时候，丁老师调走了，我们有了新老师，他整整教了我们两年。新来的老师姓付，一个年轻英俊有理想的小伙。我们再也没有那么多的作业、检查、背诵和默写，而且要求也没有丁老师严格。与其他老师不同的是，付老师喜欢带我们从多个角度欣赏文章的美，他有时候请学生表演一段情景剧，有时候自己朗诵一段美文，有雅兴的时候，老师还会自己动手写两篇文章让我们欣赏，有的笔触细腻温柔，恰如春雨般温润，有的慷慨大气，宛如秋风般豪迈，是一个有才情的老师。对于作文教学，他也灵活得多，有一个单元的主题是诗歌，学完之后，老师让我们自己试着以“星星”或者“青春”为主题写一首现代诗歌，当时，我们考试作文不准写诗歌体裁的文章，一般老师都不会教学生写诗歌。付老师不仅满怀激情地启发我们如何创造诗歌，，而且还挑出三篇他认为好的作品兴致勃勃地点评。这样的风格还体现在周记上，那时，我们班周记题材各异，我的同桌沉醉在武侠小说，周记就是一部长篇武侠小说，我在周记中曾用两首词作为《红楼梦》的读后感，令我惊奇的是，老师的点评竟然有三百多字。
付老师的课堂上充满了创新和激情，这一点很让同学兴奋，但与此同时，也忽略了一些基本而重要的知识，再加上付老师不像丁老师那么严格，有的同学不在认真学习，两年的学习结束后，我们班的成绩下滑很厉害，排在全市倒数第二，唯一的安慰是全市语文最高分还在我们班。或许，付老师只是有点理想主义的性情中人吧。
因为我们的语文成绩严重下滑，第四年又有中考，关系着学校的名誉，因此只能换老师，新老师也是男的，姓胡。跟丁老师一样，以严格而著称,上课时，他要求大家已经做好了上课的准备，比如，所有可能用到的资料都必须要放在能迅速找到的地方；上课迟到不能超过三分钟，否则有被骂的风险；他非常重视文言文的翻译，每一句每个词，都要我们认认真真写下来。他从来没在课堂上笑过，即便微笑也没有，也很少有幽默的时候，一次，他讲了一件故事，这件事有点幽默的意味，或许这样的事出现在胡老师的课堂上算是难能可贵，因此大家都笑了，结果，胡老师很莫名其妙地看着我们，那意思就是没搞懂我们为什么会发笑，见老师这样的反应，大家又很识趣地不笑了，于是胡老师接着上课。虽然他严格得几乎苛刻,但胡老师公平正直，因此大家也没有说过讨厌他。或许，大多数同学都觉得谈不上喜欢，也谈不上讨厌。重要的是我们班的语文成绩的确上升很快，中考的时候，语文排在全市第三名，全市语文最高分依然在我们班。
成绩、排名，小小的数字，却能带来很多改变。