Red Star News Network, April 23 - On April 22, on the occasion of the 29th World Book Day, a seminar on "Deepening National Reading and Improving Children's Reading Ability" organized by the Xinhua News Agency Lookout Think Tank was held in Beijing. At the meeting, the Xinhua News Agency Outlook Think Tank and the Screaming Research Institute jointly released the "Research Report on Children's Reading Ability in China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report").
The report points out that childhood is the foundation period for cultivating reading habits and developing reading ability, and the family is a key and important scene for guiding children's reading, and the government, schools and society need to provide more support and help for the development of family reading, so as to promote the popularization and promotion of reading among children in the mainland. The report also pointed out that children's reading has gradually formed a combination of paper book reading and digital reading, and the children's digital reading platform represented by the Calling App has become an important auxiliary role for children's reading, which has the value of lowering the reading threshold, enhancing reading interest, and promoting the popularization of reading.
Children read an average of 14.68 books per year, and their interest in reading and sense of accomplishment need to be improved
At present, the mainland is deeply promoting national reading and striving to build a scholarly China. Since 2014, "Reading for All" has been written into the government work report for 11 consecutive years. The report pointed out that to deepen national reading, it is necessary to "start from the baby", cultivate children's interest in reading, improve children's reading ability, and enhance the quality of children's reading. Based on this, the report investigates and analyzes the current situation of the development of children's reading ability and the pain points in cultivating it in mainland China.
The survey found that the development of children's extracurricular reading and reading habits in mainland China is generally improving: the average annual reading volume of children is 14.68 books, which is 1.81 times that of adults; children's weekly reading time is mainly concentrated in 3-10 hours, and 65.20% of children's weekly reading time is distributed in this range; more than 8 percent of children read at least once a week; and more than half of children have the awareness and habit of active reading. However, compared with developed countries, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the reading volume of mainland children, and the average annual reading volume of primary school students in the United States is about twice that of mainland children.
At the same time, the survey found that there are still deficiencies in the development of children's reading interest and reading achievement: 46.89% of children's reading achievement (i.e., confidence in their own reading ability) is at the average level or below, and only 24.15% of children have a strong sense of reading achievement and 28.96% have a strong sense of achievement. In view of the fact that nearly half of children are not confident in their reading ability, it is necessary for schools, families and society to give more positive guidance and encouragement to improve children's reading skills and self-confidence.
The report also points out that children's confidence in their own reading ability not only directly affects their reading interest and reading initiative, but also has a certain correlation with their active learning ability. The higher the child's confidence in his or her reading ability, the stronger his or her active learning ability: children who thought they had strong reading skills scored 4.32 on active learning ability, which was 2.54 times higher than that of children with very weak reading skills. Reading ability is the underlying learning ability, improving children's reading ability, allowing children to build stronger self-confidence, and helping to cultivate talents in the new era of active learning and lifelong learning.
"What to read" for children is the biggest problem, and families urgently need more support and empowerment for reading
The report points out that the family is the cradle of children's reading initiation. The survey found that more than 9 percent of parents support their children's extracurricular reading, and nearly 8 percent of parents will complete early reading guidance before their children are 4 years old.
Although parents are willing to guide their children on the path of reading, most parents find it difficult to find it difficult, and the question of "what to read" is the biggest pain point. Whether it is to broaden one's horizons and increase one's knowledge through reading, or to cultivate ability and ideological sentiment through reading, the content of reading is crucial. However, the survey found that about 9 out of 10 parents have difficulties in choosing books for their children. 68.79% of parents said that "there are too many books and they don't know how to choose books", and more than 6 percent of parents hope to get support in accurately understanding their children's reading level and accurately assessing the reading difficulty of books.
In this regard, the report proposes that the government, schools and society need to provide more support and empowerment so that children can read high-quality, diverse and appropriate content. In this aspect of society, the focus is to achieve and popularize graded Chinese reading more comprehensively and deeply, promote children at different stages to read high-quality books that match their mental level, reading needs and reading ability, and obtain advanced reading plans; provide more professional, effective and easy-to-operate systems and tools for scientific and accurate assessment of children's reading ability; and make the content that children need to read more vivid and interesting through multimedia, so as to guide children to establish reading interest and continuously expand their reading range.
The report stresses that parents themselves should also focus on improving the reading atmosphere at home. The survey found that more than 7 out of 10 parents said that they did not read much or did not read much at home, and failed to teach by word and deed. The report suggests that parents should first take themselves as role models, start from "me", reduce activities such as swiping mobile phones, chasing dramas, playing cards, etc., take time out to read at home as much as possible, and use their own practical actions to create a good family reading atmosphere, infect and drive children to read. If parents are unable to spare enough time to implement reading guidance due to objective reasons, or lack the methods and experience to guide their children's reading scientifically and effectively, they can consider seeking external help, such as using professional children's digital reading platforms to guide and accompany their children's reading.
At the seminar, Chen Jinfang, director and senior researcher of the Education System Research Office of the Institute of Theory of the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, said that schools and parents should pay more attention to the diversity of reading content when guiding children to read outside the classroom. "A professional children's comprehensive reading platform like Screaming can help children broaden their knowledge and stimulate creativity and imagination through different types of texts and knowledge in different fields. ”
The integration of digital reading and paper reading promotes 7 percent of children to use digital reading as a daily reading method
With the advent of the digital age, children's digital reading is becoming more and more popular. The report points out that digital reading, as an emerging form of reading, has become one of the mainstream ways for post-10 "digital natives" to actively learn by making reading richer, more convenient, more efficient and more interesting. According to the user data released by Caller in January 2024, the total number of words read by Caller users in 2023 will reach 223.1 billion words, equivalent to more than 1,780 "Encyclopedias of China", and the cumulative reading time will reach 63312093 hours, equivalent to 7,227 years. Digital reading and paper book reading complement each other to achieve diversified reading with the integration of paper and digital books.
The report points out that at present, digital reading has been widely recognized and positively evaluated by parents, and children's reading has gradually formed a combination of paper book reading and digital reading. Specifically, 31.07% of the children mainly use paper reading, 58.84% of the children usually use paper reading and digital reading, and another 10.09% mainly use digital reading. In other words, 7 out of 10 children use digital reading as their main way of reading. Parents generally agree that digital reading has many advantages, such as reading anytime, anywhere, enhancing interest in reading, and broadening the scope of reading. The survey also found that children who had used children's reading apps had slightly higher active learning skills.
Parents not only hope to use digital reading to achieve the goal of cultivating children's reading ability and literacy, but also hope to use digital reading to make their children's digital life healthier and more nutritious. The report points out that as the trend of children's use of digital media and consumption of digital content is inevitable, more and more parents tend to use screened high-quality, professional and interesting children's digital reading content to replace unscreened, only entertaining, and unhelpful content for physical and mental growth, or even polluted harmful content, which not only meets children's leisure and exploration needs, but also allows them to draw nourishment from the content and obtain positive education and guidance.
In such a situation, the market demand for professional, interesting and systematic children's digital reading platforms is rising. This kind of platform not only provides rich and high-quality digital reading resources, but also uses multimedia, interactive operation, AR technology and other means to achieve high attraction and high stickiness for children, making reading a fun process for children. Taking shouting as an example, it creates a 1-9 graded reading plan according to the law of children's growth and development at different stages, and provides children of different ages with corresponding reading content and rich and diverse reading forms through the combination of online interactive reading + offline physical books, so that children can feel the joy of reading and improve their reading ability at the same time, and effectively help parents solve the problems of what children read in the process of reading, how to read, and how to use it.
"Scientific and systematic children's exclusive digital content can 'salvage' children from meaningless and polluted digital contacts. Calling has a deep understanding of user needs and preferences, and can start from the perspective of children, carry out accurately matched content production and continuous optimization and iteration. Wei Wei, founder and CEO of Howhow, said that Howie hopes to work with partners in the industry to jointly focus, participate in and enrich the field of children's content, produce more high-quality children's exclusive digital content, and help more children fall in love with reading and improve their reading ability.
The report suggests that families, schools, and society should work together to give full play to the role of digital reading in children's reading enlightenment, as well as the advantages of resource richness and convenience, promote the integration and mutual promotion of children's digital reading and paper reading, and improve children's reading interest and reading ability through diversified reading methods. The report also highlights that a combination of traditional and digital technologies can more comprehensively support children's reading development, help them build strong self-directed learning skills, and prepare them for a changing future.