Introduction to the New Concept Essay Contest

Many people must have heard of the New Concept Essay Contest, right? But do you understand it? The following is an introduction to the new concept essay competition that I compiled. Welcome to read.

1. Origin

Since the end of 1997, the entire Chinese public opinion community has paid great attention to middle school Chinese education.

In 1998, the literary magazine "Sprout", which was mainly targeted at young students, also organized a series of articles with the theme of "What to Do About Education". It can be seen from this series of articles that middle school Chinese education is facing a huge crisis and is far from being able to meet the needs of the times.

Various problems in middle school Chinese education are turning Chinese, which is full of human beauty and interest in life, into mechanical and boring test-taking training. The "rational teaching model" runs through the field of Chinese teaching. This model advocates abstraction, generalization, refinement, and logical thinking ability, but ignores the involvement of emotion, will, and aesthetic taste; it values ??the deconstruction and quantification of all Chinese knowledge, but neglects to cultivate it from a high-level perspective from a textual and humanistic perspective. students’ Chinese ability; attaching importance to the complementarity of Chinese subjects. Moreover, this "rational teaching model" has further stifled students' comprehensive Chinese language ability due to the implementation of standardized examinations. The multiple-choice and true-false science examination model has become more and more popular. It is the most humane, aesthetic, flexible and creative. Chinese language education has become a purely technical, almost eight-part essay-style mechanical training.

The "New Concept Essay Contest" came into being under this background. Its starting point is to explore a way to return Chinese teaching to its due humanism and aesthetics, so that the noble people can The Chinese subject of ideal sentiment, creativity and imagination has truly become a basic subject for improving students' comprehensive quality.

2. Entry Form

In 1998, the first New Concept Essay Contest was launched. Facing the new century and cultivating new talents, the "New Concept Essay Contest" is jointly sponsored by seven national key universities including Peking University, Fudan University, East China Normal University, Nanjing University, Nankai University, Shandong University, and Xiamen University, together with "Sprouting" magazine* Co-organized by **, the competition invites domestic first-class writers, editors and humanities scholars to serve as judges. There is no registration fee and no restrictions except that the word count of the preliminary works must be controlled within 5,000 words and the contestants are under 30 years old. "New concepts" aims to promote:

"New thinking" - creative and divergent thinking, breaking the shackles of old concepts and old norms, breaking rigid conservatism, and promoting unrestrainedness.

"New expression" - not limited by subject matter or genre, using one's own language full of personality, opposing cliches, and opposing the sameness of thousands of people.

"True experience" - paying attention to, feeling and observing life truly, truly, sincerely and sincerely.

The competition is divided into preliminary rounds and semi-finals. The preliminary competition follows the format of general literary journals' essay solicitation, with no proposition, no limit on subject matter or genre, the number of words should be less than 5,000 words, and has not been published in public publications. The winners of the preliminary round will participate in the semi-finals; the semi-finals will be held in an examination room. The examination questions will be prepared by the sponsoring organization and selected by secret ballot, with on-site supervision and impartiality by the notary office.

The preliminary round determines the finalists, and the finalists come to Shanghai to participate in the semi-finals. The two scores are combined to determine the final first and second prizes and the finalist award list.

3. Development

Over the past 19 years, the number of participants in the "New Concept Essay Contest" has increased from the initial 4,000 to 70,000 every year. With the continuous expansion of social influence, the number of cooperative universities has been gradually expanded to 13. Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Sun Yat-sen University, Beijing Normal University, Wuhan University, and Renmin University of China have also joined the team of co-organizers.

For a long time, under the examination system we implemented, colleges and universities did not have the right to propose questions or conduct inspections, and could only passively accept the results of the "College Entrance Examination". As for the misunderstandings in middle school Chinese education, "Sprouting" has become more and more deeply aware of the misunderstandings in middle school Chinese education during its nearly 50 years of publication, in its contacts with young students, and in its contacts and exchanges with experts and scholars from many first-class universities in China. The negative effects of this misunderstanding are: the lack of reserve talents in literature and humanities.

The "New Concept Essay Contest" makes full use of the natural connection between "Sprout" and writers and scholars across the country. Its authoritativeness has also been approved by the heads of universities, allowing the contest winners to establish connections with universities through the competition, which provides a good foundation for future development. The transportation of reserve talents in the humanities has played an important role and has become a beneficial supplementary form for selecting talents for the college entrance examination. It is known as China's "Chinese Olympics". In the first competition, Chen Jiayong, Song Jingru, Wang Yue, Yang Qian, Wu Di, Li Jia, and Liu Jiajun were admitted without examination to Peking University, Nankai University, Nanjing University, and East China Normal University respectively; in the second competition, Huaisha, Zhang Yixuan, Xu Renjie, and Chen Kai, Li Yisu, Zhou Jianing, Qi Youyi, Li Jing, Zhang Yaochen, Lin Yao, Liu Lina, Ying Youjia, Zhou Niqin, Chen Andong, Sun Jiani, etc. were admitted to Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, Nanjing University, Xiamen University, etc. admitted early; Sun Yat-sen University added 20 points to Wang Haoshu, the winner of the fifth session, and Huang Ruijie was admitted to the seventh session, and even a second-prize winner also entered Sun Yat-sen University. Peking University has even reserved places for winners of new concepts through independent enrollment, and has successively admitted Zhang Sijing, Qian Hao and other talented people in the liberal arts. Nankai University made an exception by admitting Wang Yibo, the winner of the fifth session, and Zhang Xinyue, the first prize winner of the seventh session, from the High School Affiliated to Shanxi University. Wuhan University admitted Li Yaocen, Dai Lili, and Hu Jian.

The submission of “new concepts” brought a fresh wind to the literary world. Many works made the judges Tie Ning, Ye Zhaoyan and other famous writers unable to believe that such talented articles were written by middle school students. Even Wang Meng, the chairman of the jury, said happily: "We can put the pen to rest." Writer Zhao Lihong also lamented that "no one can kill the brilliance of youth." Many young authors with potential writing potential were discovered, and the base population of literature was expanded. Today, most of the "post-80s" writers who are becoming increasingly active in the literary world are new concept writers.

The famous educator Cai Yuanpei once proposed the idea of ??"replacing religion with art." It is proposed that literature should have humanistic and aesthetic functions, and should be able to shape the human soul, cultivate the human spirit, and nurture humanistic sentiments. This is linked to the quality education we advocate, and it is also the responsibility that the "New Concept Essay Contest" always requires itself to bear. Many of the winners of that year closely linked their lives and careers with literature, and more of the winners did not regard literature as a lifelong career or a way of survival. They did not become writers or enter the liberal arts. Literature was their A way to nourish their souls and sentiments, they have always been lovers and readers of literature. Ai Lu, the first prize winner of the second session, studied in the Water Resources Department of Tsinghua University; Li Yisu studied in the law department and is now a graduate student in law at Peking University; Ren Liang, the first prize winner of the second New Concept Essay Competition, is also a member of the Olympic Chemistry Competition For the first prize, he finally chose the Department of Chemistry of Nanjing University; Guo Yun, who won the fourth prize in the provincial mathematics competition, also won the first prize in the new concept for two consecutive years. His love is philosophy; Du Shuyan, who graduated in the fifth class, and Liu Feng, who graduated in the same year, chose life sciences; Huang Ruijie, who graduated in the seventh class, allowed him to freely choose his major when he was admitted to CUHK, and he chose physics... This is in line with what the education circle emphasizes. The comprehensive quality seems to coincide with the magazine's purpose of "making literature the spiritual home of young people". After all, only a few people can become writers. The more important function of literature may be to make it the pillar of a person's soul.

4. Social Impact

Since 1999, many newspapers and magazines across the country have reported on the "New Concept Essay" competition's impact on traditional Chinese education, triggering all walks of life to focus on exam-oriented education and In-depth thinking on quality education. The Chinese teaching methods of Shandong Experimental Middle School, which has won the first place in the competition every year, will also trigger new thinking and new hot spots in the education circle as people pay more attention to the competition.

The topic caused by Han Han, the first prize winner discovered by the competition and a "highly talented repeater" in the eyes of the media, has had a profound impact on China's education industry to this day. School education, family education, media and public opinion all have to re-examine and think about the existing talent training methods.

A large number of authors cultivated by "new concepts" such as Han Han, Guo Jingming, Zhang Yueran, etc. have become leading figures of the "post-80s" generation. They have achieved both literary and commercial success and have become unavoidable in the literary world. topic.

In overseas Chinese circles, this activity also affects Rilong. Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao once devoted a full page to reporting on the New Concept Essay Contest.

Hong Kong Tiandi Book Company publishes the traditional Chinese version of the award-winning work "Youth Articles Shock the World". Many young Chinese students studying abroad have returned to writing in their mother tongue. Every year we have submissions from overseas.

What is exciting is that Chinese language education in middle schools has also undergone substantial reforms in recent years. Many people believe that the propositions of college entrance examination essays are quite close to the semi-final questions of the New Concept Essay Contest. This is a very good development trend. . As Wang Meng said, new concepts come from old concepts. The purpose of advocating new concepts is not to be innovative, but to increase young students' interest in composition and tell them that only articles that are true, express true feelings, creative and imaginative are good articles.