Development Of Picture Book Reading Behaviors For Chinese Children Aged From Three To Six

Picture books tell story or pass information to children through a series of pictures with or without corresponding text. Picture book is not only the "the first book of life" for pre-school children, but also the main material in early reading which widely used in kindergarten and the family. It is an important form of early learning and of unique educational value for early childhood development. In recent years, studies of early reading have been a hot issue in childhood education sector. Children's picture book reading is an important component of early reading; Studies on children's picture book reading may reflect the development of children's reading ability. With the proposal of emergent literacy, Western scholars began to pay attention to behaviors which the children demonstrate in early literacy. They have achieved rich results. However, the study of Chinese children's early reading picture books pay less attention to the development of reading behaviors, especially lacking of systematic research about the development of reading behaviors which the children demonstrate when they read picture books.By using the framework of overseas study, this study aims to explore reading behaviors' development of Chinese children from three to six from three aspects:basic reading skills, the ability to understand picture books and language behaviors shown in the process of picture book reading. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has been used to test the development and reading behaviors of Chinese children.In the quantitative part, we used the classification scheme for emergent reading raised by western scholars Sulzby reading to analyze the language behaviors of Chinese children. Qualitative analysis is used to explain the results from the quantitative analysis and real the specific process of children's picture book reading development.The results demonstrate that children's ability of reading basic skills, understanding skills and language use skills improve as age increased and showed broadly similar with foreign children trends. Therefore, this study suggests that Chinese children's picture books reading basic skill still need to be improved; lacking of awareness of the structure of picture books; Children show good ability to understand the main role and events, but lack of transition ability to understand the plot; Chinese children's language reading behaviors shows a significant stage features which are mainly an oral language to tell a story. we Proposed early education workers and parents should foster and nurture the basic habits of reading picture books; enhance children's understanding of the structure of a picture book; choose and provide story book materials for children according to the structure and content of picture books; use storybook reading as an intermediary to promote children's oral language development from which to help children achieve the development of reading ability.