How do high school students become proficient readers of the Chinese classics? And what kind of teaching methods could make students be such proficient readers? In order to resolve these questions, this study aimed to grasp the thinking process in an expert’s research paper as for eliciting a model of learning process for students through an analysis of the structure of the research paper and examining basic concepts and theory in the related field. The target research article was Kazuto Tominaga’s “Progressing of Literary Language that Uses ‘Hu’ up to Tao Yuanming”(published in Wei Ming, 22, 2004). The expert’s learning processes were organized in to 7 stages, and his thinking methods at each stage were described concretely. Based on this, the current article suggested how teaching materials should be developed so that high school students can attain “reading” and “understanding” of the Chinese classics. The key is for the teacher as well as the learners to “become interested” in the literary work they read. Looking back at the teaching practices of the Chinese classics in schools to date, students’ learning often stopped at the surface level understanding without progressing to the level that called for a deeper understanding of the text. The current study suggests one strategy to overcome the challenges of teaching the existing Chinese classic studies, and to make a breakthrough to develop students into proficient readers of Chinese classics, for ensuring their rich language life.