| Informational picture books are very important reading resources for preschool children. By reading them, children can be exposed to academic vocabulary, provided with world knowledge, and equipped with scientific concepts and the language required for science learning and discussing. However, the value of this type of picture books is not fully reflected in researches and practices, just because people doubt that whether children can comprehend and how they comprehend. So far, there is no relevant empirical research seen.A set of analysis frame is designed apt to study comprehending informational picture books for preschool children, based on Pappas’s (2006) study of the content structure of informational books, and focused on children’s cognitive feature. The frame includes three dimensions:understanding scientific phenomenon, understanding scientific attributes, and understanding characteristic events.3-5year-old preschool children were selected, amounting to90. They were assigned to three groups——independent reading group, read-aloud group, and eyemovement group,30children for each group. In order to facilitate studying reading comprehension characteristics of informational picture books, all subjects experienced several procedures:pre-reading scientific concepts interview, reading picture books, pretend reading, and post-reading scientific concepts interview. Except for different reading styles, other procedures are almost the same. Children of independent reading group implemented independent reading; children of read-aloud group were divided into several small groups, and participated read-aloud activity organized by the experimenter; children of eyemovement group experienced pre-measuring and post-measuring. During pre-measuring, children were presented the informational picture books on the screen of eyemovement equipment. Children read the book independently, and their eyemovement data were recorded in the equipment. During post-measuring, the experimenter organized read-aloud activity, and then used eyemovement equipment to record children’s eyemovement data.There were three columns, and six studies within them. These three columns focused on children’s reading comprehension feature of informational picture books, visual cognitive feature, and scientific concepts obtaining respectively. The results were mainly derived from two tools:one was the CHAT form data which is transcript of pretend reading and interviewing video, the other was the eyemovement data which were saved in Tobii T120removable eyemovement equipment. The analysis of reading comprehension and scientific concepts obtaining levels were primarily scored by using the analysis frame and its scoring standard, and then by using SPSS16.0to analyze these statistics. Besides, the CHAT form data of scientific concepts interview was analyzed by qualitative method. The eyemovement data was analyzed in two ways:one was analysis by using SPSS the eyemovement indexes of AOIs which are divided for the purpose of research; the other was analysis by eyePatterns-v0.91software to explore the eye patterns and similarity among them.The results of children’s informational picture books reading comprehension characteristics studying imply:children’s comprehension levels present differences among three dimensions, and this result embodies that understanding level of scientific phenomenon is highest, and the level of understanding attributes comes second, and the level of understanding characteristic events is the lowest. Children’s comprehending level increases with age. Reading comprehension level of read-aloud group is significantly higher than the independent reading group. Comprehending level of read-aloud group children did not show significant differences among three dimensions, while the level of independent reading group showed significant differences between understanding scientific phenomenon and characteristic events, and also seen between understanding attributes and characteristic events. The performance between two groups in understanding three dimensions show significant differences. The studies of children’s visual cognitive characteristics in reading informational picture books imply:children’s visual cognitive levels present differences depends on different reading comprehension levels. Generally speaking, children with high reading comprehension competence showed high visual cognitive level. Children’s visual cognitive levels of watching key image, namely scientific phenomenon, present discrepancies for different reading styles; the correlating analysis between reading comprehension level and visual cognitive level reveals that they are significantly correlated. Age, difficulty level of characteristic events have great influence on children’s visual cognitive level. Children’s continuous fixation counts of characteristic events present significant correlation to the level of understanding characteristic events. Moreover, the related coefficient showed continuous growth trend with age. The eye patterns and similarities among children’s eye track orbits in reading informational picture books are both related to the difficulty of characteristic events and children’s cognitive levels. On the whole, children can pay attention to the images related to the topic of informational picture books, and they can follow the complicated area of the page with more complex characteristic events.The studies of children’s obtaining scientific concepts by reading understanding informational picture books imply:the levels of children obtaining scientific concepts of independent reading group present the growth trend from low to high along with age, while in read-aloud group,4-year-old children behavior the highest in obtaining scientific concepts, and5-year-old children come second, the last are3-year-old children. In general, read-aloud group gain significant higher level of scientific concepts than independent reading group. Different age levels and different reading styles play different roles in children gaining and expressing scientific concepts. So it is concluded that, these two reading styles show two sides in reading informational picture books, and they can not replace each other. Besides, the situations in different age for gaining scientific concepts by reading are also different:the younger children tend to explain concepts with naive theory, or speculate and imagine audaciously, on the contrary, the elder children tend to reply the questions with "I don’t know", which he/she is uncertain for the answer.To sum up all the results of three sections, three discoveries were found:First, the frame of children comprehending informational picture books is constructed. Children develop the cognition on scientific phenomenon, attributes and characteristic events of informational picture books with age growing. Second, the developing proceeds of informational picture book reading comprehension is found. Children develop the competence of comprehending informational picture book from4year-old, and develop understanding scientific phenomenon and attributes to a certain degree before5year-old, but the competence of understanding characteristic events still in a low degree. Third, two different reading method——independent reading and read-aloud, have different impacts on reading comprehension. And then the paper proposed several suggestions of instructing informational picture book reading in educational scene. |
PDF Full Text Request