Recently, a seminar on "Deepening National Reading and Improving Children's Reading Ability" sponsored by the Xinhua News Agency's Lookout Think Tank was held in Beijing. At the meeting, the Lookout Think Tank and the Howling Research Institute jointly released the "Research Report on Children's Reading Ability in China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which comprehensively sorted out and analyzed the current situation, challenges and trends of children's reading ability cultivation in mainland China.
In order to better gather the wisdom of all parties, the seminar invited representatives from relevant departments, experts and scholars, educational publishing units and digital reading enterprises. Ren Yanbin, Deputy General Manager and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of China Press and Publication Media Group, Lu Qin, Chief Education Expert and Former Editor-in-Chief of China Children's Press and Publication Group, Chen Jinfang, Director and Senior Researcher of the Education System Research Office of the Institute of Theory of the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, Qiu Huamin, Director of the Office of Student Work of the Faculty of Education of Beijing Normal University, Associate Professor of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, Yang Xiujie, Secretary of the Educational Psychology Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society, Bao Hongyu, Planning and Editor of Beijing Normal University Press, Shi Mingjie, Associate Professor of the School of Child Development and Education of China Women's University, Wei Wei, Founder and CEO of Zhaohao, and other participants shared their research views and practical experience on how to improve children's independent reading ability, how to make good use of various digital and intelligent technologies, products, tools and carriers, and how families, schools, society and other parties can provide support for children's reading, and put forward decision-making suggestions.
Children's extracurricular reading development is generally improving, but challenges remain
At the seminar, the Lookout Think Tank and the Howling Research Institute jointly released the relevant results of the report. The report shows that the overall development of children's reading in mainland China is improving, but there are also many problems and shortcomings. According to the survey data, the average annual reading volume of children in mainland China is 14.68 books, but the number of children who insist on reading every day accounts for less than 1/4; the gap between urban and rural areas is obvious, and the reading interest and reading ability of rural children need to be improved urgently; with the rise of academic pressure, the reading performance of children in the upper primary school has declined; nearly half of the children are not confident in their reading ability; parents lack sufficient ability, time and energy to provide their children with quality and quantity of reading guidance, and urgently need external support and empowerment.
Family is the cradle of children's reading initiation. According to the report, 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. About 9 out of 10 parents said they had 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.
How to solve a series of problems such as children's low interest in reading, low sense of accomplishment in reading, and parents not knowing what books to read to their children? At the seminar, many guests discussed "how to guide", "what to read" and "how to read" in children's reading.
Pay attention to children's reading interests and make them fall in love with reading
Reading interest determines the intrinsic driving force of children's reading, which directly affects children's dedication to reading and learning effectiveness. According to the report, 47.55% of parents believe that their children are not interested in reading. There is a big difference between the types of books that children like and the types of books that parents expect their children to read.
Lu Qin, chief education expert and former editor-in-chief of China Children's Press and Publication Group, said, "Childhood is inseparable from fairy tales, growth is inseparable from stories, and reading is inseparable from love. "Reading that doesn't focus on the child's interests, just tells the child what to read, is a failure. Therefore, to guide children to fall in love with reading, the first thing is to stimulate children's interest in reading.
"The more respect there is for children, the more touching children's books will be. Ren Yanbin, deputy general manager and deputy editor-in-chief of China Press and Publication Media Group, said that from the perspective of publishing houses and source supply, the creation and publication of excellent children's books is inseparable from the accurate grasp of the physical and mental characteristics of children and children, and from respect for children.
Pictured: Founder and CEO Wei Wei
Wei Wei, founder and CEO of Howhow, said: "As a professional children's digital content platform, Howler provides interesting online interaction, physical books and IP content through a combination of online and offline content to stimulate children's interest in reading. Specifically, it combines multiple forms to make the content "live", lowers the reading threshold and makes children interested in reading, and at the same time, through interactive design and incentive mechanisms, it triggers children's thinking and allows children to gain a sense of accomplishment in reading. In addition, Howling applies digital technology to all aspects of content production iteration to judge children's love for content, and continuously improve content iteration ability to meet children's content needs more accurately.
"Whether children are interested in reading and how effective they are reading has a lot to do with whether the reading material is interesting or not, and whether it is fun or not. 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 first of all, it should be problem-oriented, by guiding children's curiosity, to improve the effect of children's reading, and secondly, the content should be interesting. In these respects, the practice of barking has given the industry a great inspiration.
Improve graded Chinese reading, guide children to read books well and read good books
If you want your child to learn nutrients from reading, "what to read" is very important, which is also a pain point that parents are generally concerned about and troubled about. Ren Yanbin pointed out that from the perspective of cognitive laws, it is necessary for children to read more classics and attach importance to graded reading. Reading classics can help children build a complete knowledge framework, help children tap their talents, and draw upward strength from great works. Graded reading uses a standardized ruler to measure each child's individual needs for books and reading instruction.
Yang Xiujie, associate professor of psychology at Beijing Normal University and secretary of the Educational Psychology Professional Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society, said that graded reading is one of the important means to achieve personalized reading.
"Graded reading has become an important scientific paradigm for improving children's reading ability in China. Wang Lei, a professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Primary Education, Faculty of Education, Capital Normal University, pointed out that what to read, how to read, how to evaluate what to read, and graded reading can give a systematic way to build a scientific profession to solve these three difficult and painful problems in improving children's reading ability.
Although the importance of graded reading is generally recognized, graded reading in Chinese is still in its infancy compared to mature graded reading in English. According to the report, 43.93% of parents have not heard of graded reading in Chinese. Among parents who have heard graded reading in Chinese, only 60% of parents agree with the necessity of graded reading in Chinese.
Bao Hongyu, planning editor of Beijing Normal University Press, said that to create an integrated solution around Chinese graded reading, there are three elements first, the first is to have books, the second is to have products and platforms, and the third is to provide services. This is something that needs to be built by the joint efforts of various research institutions, publishers, and digital reading companies.
As a representative of digital reading enterprises, Wei Wei shared the exploration of shouting in children's reading grading. Relying on the I+1 learning theory, according to the cognitive development, acceptance, and reading level of children of different ages, we have developed graded reading products with a spiral of difficulty from 1 to 9 levels, and built a content ladder through systematic content and refined grading, so as to meet the reading needs of children of all ages and strengthen the cultivation of reading habits.
The integration of paper reading and digital reading promotes each other to comprehensively improve children's reading ability
As an emerging form of reading, digital reading has become one of the mainstream learning methods for the post-10 "digital natives" to make reading richer, more convenient, more efficient and more interesting.
According to the report, 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. 31.07% of the children mainly use paper reading, 58.84% of the children usually use paper reading and digital reading, and 10.09% of the children usually use digital reading. In other words, 7 out of 10 children use digital reading as their main way of reading. According to the data released by Howling, in 2023, its users will cover 177 countries around the world and 469 cities in China, and the total number of words read by users throughout the year will reach 223.1 billion words, equivalent to more than 1,780 "Encyclopedia of China", and the cumulative reading time will reach 63312093 hours, equivalent to 7,227 years.
"Reading anytime and anywhere without space limitations", "vivid and interesting, enhance reading interest", "Rich and easy to obtain reading resources, broaden the scope of reading", etc., are the main reasons why most parents carry out digital reading for their children. In addition, the report also points out that 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.
Qiu Huamin, director of the Office of Student Work of the Faculty of Education of Beijing Normal University, said that with the development of the times, reading is no longer limited to reading words through the eyes for input, and presentation forms such as reading, dialogue, AR, and VR bring a richer reading experience, which is conducive to enhancing children's interest in reading.
"Shouting is a very good practice for combining digital and paper reading. Shi Mingjie, associate professor of the School of Child Development and Education of China Women's University, said that returning to the essence of children's reading, focusing on the characteristics of children's physical and mental development, especially the characteristics of cognitive development, from the perspective of human nature, digital reading should design some activities to attract young children, and have different design plans for children of different ages.
In addition, the use of digital means to promote the urban-rural flow and sharing of reading resources and reading services has also been affirmed by many experts and scholars. "The integration of digital reading and paper reading is an inevitable trend, and at the same time, how to promote the balanced development of high-quality reading resources, the development of digital content is a good starting point, so that different regions can enjoy high-quality resources. Bao Hongyu pointed out.
According to the report, 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.