Some mothers feel that picture book reading is a "snack", and the effect is not so direct on improving their children's reading ability and even their future writing ability. So what are the facts? How does picture book reading affect the development of literacy, narrative skills, and emotional cognition? Let's take a look at the answers of Professor Wu Nianyang, a famous child educator and guru.
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01
Does reading improve grades?
My answer is: Definitely. Reading can broaden children's horizons, improve children's observation, comprehension, imagination, creativity, these abilities improve, academic performance will of course improve. More importantly, the enlightenment of a person's spirit often stems from reading, and literary reading can improve children's ability to understand the emotions of others, the ability to judge the right and wrong of the world, the ability to cope with setbacks in life, and so on.
When children read, they generally project themselves as positive characters in the book, such as when reading "Library Lion", they naturally tend to Miss Mai and hate Mr. Martin; after reading "Grow Up to Be a Good Grandpa", there will be children who sincerely say to themselves: "I will grow up to be a good grandmother." ”
This kind of involuntarily spoken words is the young reader's identification with the character and the perception of the theme of the story. This identity has influenced their aesthetic tendencies and cultivated their values. How many of the children who have taken the wrong path of life are due to lack of intelligence? —— It is all because of the problems of values and aesthetic tendencies.
02
Why should parents tell the same story over and over again?
In terms of language ability, being able to repeat sentence by sentence and being able to retell a story in its entirety are different in terms of ability requirements. Just like when we learn a foreign language, we will first fill in a blank for an element of a sentence, then we will say a sentence, then we will say a paragraph, and finally a complete story.
We adults look at stories and want to know the plot of the story, but the most important thing for children to listen to stories is to enter the grammatically consistent mother sentence, which cannot be solved by listening to it a few times. Therefore, young children like to listen to familiar stories repeatedly, because they have foresight and a strong sense of participation in listening to familiar stories. When their language ability can be freely repeated and free to dialogue, they will naturally pursue the new opposite sex of the story. At that time, he would be able to read books by himself.
03
Are picture books too simple for literate children?
Often parents tell me that my children have gone to elementary school, and the books you recommend to me are all pictures, which is too childish. There are also primary school Chinese teachers who say to the volunteers who take children to read picture books, there are too few books you have brought, I usually do not allow them to read such books, I ask them to go to the library to borrow books with many words.
But when I took out Father and Son, turned to "Dog Love" (above), and asked them, "Please tell me what story this painting tells?" Do you think children in grades can read this painting? "They tend to look embarrassed.
Most people can't fully understand the logic of the progress of "Dog Lover", and in the first picture, what is the father saying to another gentleman? Some people said that they gave him a dog to go hunting, so why give him money? First, they want to bring the dog back, so why pretend to be a masked thief? We surveyed a few fifth-graders at several primary schools, and only a handful of them judged the general trend of the story after repeated observation, but there was still a lot of detail that could not be explained. For example, some people say that the father and son bought a dog in the first painting, and some people say that the two coins in the hands of the gentleman dressed in blue on the first painting are from the first painting and the first painting...
Reading a picture is a very difficult thing, what happens from the picture to the graph? What are the clues on the screen, and how to judge the inner activities of the characters according to their expressions and physical postures? This requires a certain amount of observation, judgment, and reasoning.
Some studies have shown that children who read picture books and talk about picture books every week have significantly stronger narrative skills than children who do not participate in reading activities.
The specific manifestations of strong narrative ability are: the narrative structure is complete, there is a beginning and an end, the character relationship is clear, the theme is appropriate, the clues are coherent, the content is rich, there are dialogues, there are scenes, there are complex time marker words, high vocabulary level, more adjectives, complex sentences...
In fact, throughout childhood, the dominant channel of children's cognitive processing is visual information processing. Due to the lack of life experience, written words alone cannot construct corresponding pictures in the brain. For example, reading a book and seeing a sentence "The wolf drinks water upstream, and the sheep drink water downstream." To understand this sentence, the child must have the image of "wolf" and "sheep" in his mind, and he must also understand the meaning of "upstream" and "downstream", if these two points are not satisfied, the sentence cannot be fully understood. But if you look at the picture book, this sense of picture can be easily constructed.
When children are not yet capable of constructing meaning based on pure words, good paintings can help children feel the emotions of the characters. Take two images from Voices in the Park as an example:
Even illiterate children can feel the tense and oppressive atmosphere from the left picture, and the peaceful and tranquil atmosphere from the right picture, because... Look at the woods in the distance!
04
My child is in elementary school, can he still read the picture books you recommend?
Good picture books are suitable for all ages. The same story, people of different ages read different levels of connotation, as long as they like, as long as they can impress the reader, it is a good reading.
Take "My Father's Name is Jonny" as an example, the protagonist's parents are divorced, but the children who are already in the fifth grade cannot accurately judge the relationship between Dim's parents when they read it to the end, but a five-and-a-half-year-old boy can feel the sad mood of the characters in the book, please see The diary of Professor Li Hailin of the School of Education of Shanghai Normal University told his 5-and-a-half-year-old son "My Father's Name is Jonny":
……
When I read the child's farewell to his father, I saw my son's tears fall on the table, and he wiped the tears off the table with his hands. I guess it's a bit embarrassing.
I continued to read, because I was also very emotional, and the tears flowed down, and my voice was a little choked. My son was sitting in my arms with his back to me, and he couldn't see my tears. He touched my eyes with his hand, and I guess he meant to see if I was in tears too.
After reading it, he sat still for a moment, very short, about a minute, and then walked out of the study. I also went out after a while and saw him sitting on the living room floor against the couch. Because he was playing with his favorite toy before, I said, "Let's play together," and he said, "Do you still have the heart to play?" ”
For almost half an hour, without saying anything more about the book, his grandfather was leaving, he sent his grandfather at the door, and said "goodbye", then closed the door, turned around, and suddenly asked me: "Daddy, why are you crying?" I said, "His father is going to leave his child, and he is very sad, and I am sad in my heart." ”
I asked my son, "His father is so reluctant to leave the child, so why does he have to leave?" ”
The son had obviously not thought about the problem beforehand, and after thinking about it, he said, "His father may be going to go abroad." The tone was not very certain, it was the meaning of guessing.
I asked my son, "What do you think is the most upsetting place?" The son replied, "That's when he said goodbye to his father." I read the page again and asked him, "Which sentence makes you feel the most sad?" Without any hesitation, he pointed to the last sentence and said, "His father's hand is getting smaller and smaller." ”
"My Dad's Name is Ginny" is long, the story is more obscure, 5 and a half years old children can't think too much, but they have understood the most basic emotion of the book - sadness, and can construct a dynamic scene with the help of the picture: the train is gone, and Dad's hands are getting smaller and smaller...
On this ordinary night, a 5-and-a-half-year-old child shared the sad story of another father and son with his father, and he also saw his father's sadness - his father also cried. What is even more precious is that he immersed himself in this sad state of mind for half an hour, and blamed his father: "Do you still have the heart to play?" "He really understands sadness.
So "My Dad's Name is Ginny," at the age of five and a half, you can read it.
05
My child is particularly naughty and does not like to read, what should I do?
When you encounter parents who say that their children do not like to read, please refer to the previous discussion to answer a few questions: Do you take your child to read when he or she is very young? Do you accompany your child to school? Do you share the joy of reading with your children? Or do you always reprimand your child with the stories in the books? Do parents read books themselves in their spare time? Is there a fair number of children's books in the house?
In general, a considerable number of parents cannot afford to ask these simple questions. Next I'll tell them: Give it a try with our recommended Interactive Shared Reading to make sure your child loves reading from now on.
Meet Wen Jieyou during the winter vacation
Come to a picture book show with you