How do Chinese students memorize so many poems? — Transcript

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1. 0:00In China, many of us grew up memorizing
2. 0:02traditional Chinese poems at school. We
3. 0:05were asked to recite them again and
4. 0:07again.
5. 0:09One major reason we memorized poems is
6. 0:11simply because school requires it. In
7. 0:14China, children start learning classical
8. 0:16poems at a young age and some poems are
9. 0:19very short with only four lines and each
10. 0:23line may contain just five or seven
11. 0:26Chinese characters. Take one of the most
12. 0:29famous Chinese poems, Jing Ye Si, Quiet
13. 0:33Night Thoughts if I translate it. It's
14. 0:35written by Li Bai and it's more than
15. 0:371,000 years ago.
16. 0:49The poem describes a person who is
17. 0:53looking at the moon at night and he was
18. 0:57thinking of his hometown. As children,
19. 0:59we learned these four lines by heart. We
20. 1:03knew the words, we could recite them,
21. 1:05but we might not have experienced the
22. 1:08feeling of
23. 1:09being far away from home because we
24. 1:12stayed at home almost all days. Years
25. 1:14later, when we moved to another city or
26. 1:17another country, we may look at the moon
27. 1:19and suddenly remember the poem. And this
28. 1:22time, we understand the feeling. I think
29. 1:25this is one of the
30. 1:28interesting things that memorizing
31. 1:30poetry at a young age and we don't
32. 1:33necessarily understand everything when
33. 1:35we first learn it, but the words stay
34. 1:37with us, stay somewhere in our memory
35. 1:41and our experiences later in life
36. 1:45give those poems new meaning.
37. 1:48Give our experience new meaning.
38. 1:51The second point is poetry can support
39. 1:55us emotionally as we grow older. Think
40. 1:57of it like reading literature.
41. 2:00Literature may not help you make more
42. 2:02money unless you want to be
43. 2:05professional writer or do something
44. 2:07about writing.
45. 2:09Poetry serves a similar function.
46. 2:12And when we face difficulties that we
47. 2:15cannot easily deal with, a poem or story
48. 2:19can sometimes help us get
49. 2:21through them, get through the
50. 2:23difficulty.
51. 2:25Life has
52. 2:26ups and downs. Poetry and
53. 2:29literature can offer
54. 2:31comfort and help us see things from
55. 2:35different perspectives. Whether it's
56. 2:38Chinese, English, or French poetry,
57. 2:41poems play an important role in
58. 2:44expressing human emotions and different
59. 2:47views of the world.
60. 2:51There is no big secret. Rhythm and rhyme
61. 2:55help. They just like they do in English
62. 2:58or French poetry.
63. 3:00And repetition helps too.
64. 3:02In China, tests also create pressure
65. 3:06because students um
66. 3:08if they don't work hard, they lose
67. 3:09points. If they cannot recite a poem
68. 3:13correctly and write the characters from
69. 3:16memory correctly.
70. 3:18That kind of pressure pushed many of us
71. 3:21to repeat the poems and write them out
72. 3:24on the paper again and again and uh
73. 3:27although it didn't always help us
74. 3:30understand their meaning. Another
75. 3:32important part of Chinese schooling is
76. 3:35we have a morning reading. In many
77. 3:37schools, especially boarding schools,
78. 3:40students get up around 6:00 in the
79. 3:42morning and they go to the classroom to
80. 3:46read aloud before breakfast. Reading
81. 3:49aloud
82. 3:50allows children to hear their own voice
83. 3:54and repeat what they have learned.
84. 3:57Because
85. 3:59poems have rhythm and rhyme and reading
86. 4:01them a lot make the children easier to
87. 4:04remember. And some critics argue that
88. 4:07this kind of memorization
89. 4:09doesn't work very well. Students may
90. 4:12perform well on the test, but they
91. 4:15didn't truly understand
92. 4:18or know how to use what they have
93. 4:20learned. And that's partly true. I don't
94. 4:23think memorization alone is enough.
95. 4:27Understanding is important, too. But I
96. 4:30also think memorization and
97. 4:32understanding don't always have to
98. 4:34happen at the same time. Sometimes we
99. 4:37memorize something first, and then
100. 4:40we understand it much later, probably
101. 4:42several years later. And poetry is a
102. 4:44good example of that. Of course,
103. 4:46memorizing poems takes time, patience,
104. 4:49consistency, and
105. 4:51perseverance.
106. 4:52But over time it can enrich our
107. 4:55vocabulary. And uh
108. 4:57it also deepen our sense of language and
109. 5:02reason and give us more ways to express
110. 5:06our own thoughts and feelings. This is
111. 5:09um beauty of the poetry.