Research On International Chinese Picture Book Readers For Thai Young Children

International Chinese language education has shown an obvious trend toward younger age groups,with the change to the younger age group,development of corresponding graded readers is on the agenda.Picture book reader is the main form of graded readers for early childhood,they have obvious advantages.Research in the field of international Chinese language education on young children’s Chinese books is still in the exploratory stage,the writer found out that through searching literature,there are only few study of Chinese picture books for young children,however,most of them compared Chinese picture books with English picture books,the study do not cover the commonalities and differences among Chinese picture book readers for young children.Moreover,this kind of Chinese graded picture book readers that have been published are general-purpose graded books,which does not differentiate the country of users.In different countries and regions,the characteristics of young children’s Chinese learning are different,and there are some certain challenges in the applicability of the readers in different countries and regions.The author takes two widely used international Chinese picture books as main research objects:Rainbow Dragon Level 1 and Smart Cat(for kids)Level 1 and 2,examines their characteristics in terms of layout,topic selection,external supporting resources,and readability through quantitative statistics,then attempt to conclude the advantages and disadvantages.On the basis of that,we will integrate the outcome of the survey or interview with Thai Chinese teachers and students,discover their applicability among Thai early childhood learners and promote the localization of picture book readers among Thai early childhood students.This paper is divided into six chapters: the first chapter is the introduction.After introducing the purpose of the study,the author describes the details of two sets of picture books that have been selected,and clarifies the reasons for selecting the corresponding level of content for the study.The literature review consists of graded readers` concept,the development status of international Chinese graded readers,and the status of research on international Chinese picture book readers.The second chapter is an overall examination of the two sets of readers,comparing them in terms of writing style,writing concept and overall capacity,respectively.The third chapter examines the internal aspects of the two sets of picture book readers,including topic and language difficulty,involving statistics on topic categories and quantitative statistics on vocabulary and sentences.Chapter four examines the comparison of the external resources of the two.Chapter five analyzes the applicability of the picture book readers among young children in Thailand and found out that there are some limitations of the two sets of readers in terms of utiliting with Thai early childhood students: First,the topic coverage of the two sets of picture books is different,and neither of them contains country-specific topic content,which is not closely related to the daily life of Thai children,especially the cultural life.Second,the vocabulary of the two sets of readings fluctuates greatly,and the recurrence rate of key words needs to be improved.Third,the external supporting resources of the two books need to be improved.Chapter 6 combines the above findings with surveys or interviews with Thai kindergarten teachers and students and the author’s own classroom teaching experience with Thai children in two semesters,and proposes suggestions for the localization of Chinese bilingual picture books in Thailand,such as enriching the topic content,integrating local cultural themes and topics,balancing the number of vocabulary and new words,increasing the vocabulary recurrence rate,making audio teaching AIDS and adding the compilation of instructional books.At last,the chapter points out the shortcomings of the thesis and the content that still needs improvement.