A Constrastive Study Of English And Chinese Graded Reading Materials

With the increasing comprehensive national strength,the continuous and effective promotion of the “Belt and Road Initiative”,China and other countries in economy,culture and other fields are more closely interconnected.While all exchanges are based on language,therefore,more and more countries attach importance to Chinese,include it in the scope of basic education.Reading cannot be divorced from language learning,so plenty of graded Chinese reading materials have been published in succession.However,due to the late start,lack of experience in the development team and inconsistent standards of graded reading in China,there are still some improvements to be made in graded Chinese reading materials.As the development of graded English reading material has a longer history than that of graded Chinese reading material,its quality has become an important indicator of the maturity of English communication.This paper takes the Rainbow Dragon and Collins Big Cat as the research object.The comparison range of the two sets of reading materials is level 2,which is the closest in the number of new words and the age of readers.This paper mainly uses statistical method and comparative analysis method,to analyze and compare the compilation strategies of the two materials in theme structure,text content and complementary resources,then summarize the respective characteristics of them,focuses on the advantages of graded English reading materials and combining the deficiencies of graded Chinese reading materials.In order to puts forward corresponding improvement suggestions for the compilation of graded Chinese reading materials based on these three aspects,so as to promote the development of graded Chinese reading materials and help Chinese learners learn Chinese better.This paper is divided into six parts,as follows: the introduction part introduces the graded readings Rainbow Dragon and Collins Big Cat,and explains the reasons for taking these two sets of readings as the research object in detail.The literature review is carried out from six aspects: children’s reading psychology,the origin and standard of graded reading,single investigation of graded Chinese reading materials,comparative study of graded Chinese reading materials,rewriting practice of graded Chinese reading materials,and comparative study of graded English and Chinese reading.The first chapter is the comparison of the writing structure and subject of Rainbow Dragon(Level2)and Collins Big Cat(Level2).The second chapter is the comparison of the text content and specific reason analysis,from two dimensions of vocabulary and readability,vocabulary statistics include the number of new words,the proportion of new words,the recurrence rate of key words,readability mainly bases on the average sentence length and the number of sentences per hundred words.The third chapter is the comparison of the complementary resources of the two sets of readings,from two dimensions of online and offline,including the analysis of exercises,online applications and website resources.The fourth chapter,based on the results of the previous comparison,summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of Rainbow Dragon,and puts forward specific suggestions for the compilation of graded Chinese reading materials.Such as,improve the proportion and richness of cultural subjects,strengthen the cohesion between each section of the volume,pay attention to the connection between different volumes,reduce the fluctuation of total vocabulary and new words in each volume,improve the recurrence rate of vocabulary,enrich the form of vocabulary recurrence,add reading exercises,optimize online resources,etc.The conclusion summarizes the content of the whole paper and points out the need for improvement.