A Comparative Study On Picture Book Reading For 5-to-6-Year-Old Children With Different Literacy Levels

Picture book are books in which both pictures and words tell stories.and they are of great value to the development of children in all aspects.However,in educational practice,some teachers and parents have the misconception that literate kids can comprehend picture book.Do children’s literacy levels influence their reading of picture book? To what extent? In what ways? The answers to these questions will help teachers and parents to form a correct attitude toward picture book reading,and further,help the prevention of‘primary school-oriented’ tendency.Eye-movement analysis is one of the most effective methods to study children’s picture book reading at present.It can record and analyze children’s eye movement data while they are reading literature,and then objectively describe their reading characteristics.Therefore,this study uses the eye movement experiment to make a comparative study on picture book reading for 5-to-6-year-old children with different levels of difficulty so as to enrich the relevant research on children’s picture book reading,Also,the research aims to provide guidelines for parents and teachers.In this study,the literacy of the children in a kindergarten in Fuzhou was tested.60 children were recruited in this study,including 30 children with lower literacy and 30 children with higher literacy.The eye movement experiment was conducted to compare the characteristic of the reading of picture book for children with different levels of literacy.Two picture books with different difficulty levels were taken as the study materials,At last,on the basis of the results of this study,some educational advice were put forward.The main results of this study are as follows:1.Children with high or low literacy levels preferentially and primarily focus on the picture area,neglecting the difficulty of the picture book;2.Children with high or low literacy levels prioritize and focus primarily on key information,followed by the secondary information,and then general information when reading the picture area;both were able to make connections between related picture images;3.The children with low literacy pay attention to the picture area earlier and to a greater extent than high literacy children,and low literacy children pay more attention to the connection between pictures than high literacy children;4.The children with high literacy pay attention to text areas earlier and use them as key information than low literacy children;high literacy children are able to read text continuously and initially show a left-to-right reading order when reading text;while low literacy children tend to look at text without reading it or occasionally if even;5.The difficulty of the picture book do not affect the attention of high literacy children when it comes to the picture and text areas,but affected the attention of low literacy children to the picture and text areas.Low literacy children pay significantly more attention to the picture area in picture book with difficulty than in picture book with lower difficulty,while they pay significantly more attention to the text area in picture book with lower difficulty than in picture book with higher difficulty;6.Children with high literacy levels are able to establish initial correspondence between pictures and text,while children with low literacy levels do not establish a genuine picture-text connection.