Exploring children's attitude and reading comprehension toward different styles of reading orientation

Abstract

Library is an institution which aims to provide access to knowledge and information services. For child readers, visual and textual cues including book cover, abstract, and table of contents facilitate them in book selection. However, book browsing could be time- and effort-consuming, and children preferred more intuitive guide. In this study, reading orientation in video form was proposed as solution to provide children with book introduction and help them in book selection process. Elementary school students who start reading Chinese texts independently were recruited as the subjects of this study, and their attitude and performance with different styles of reading orientation were investigated respectively. Preliminarily results showed that for the 24 participants, children who read with the graphical style orientation told more facts and details of the book content, albeit the difference between textual and graphical styles of orientation was not statistically significant. The finding also suggested the presence of graphic might facilitate children's comprehension of the story by coordinating intuitive cues with children's inference. Further investigation is conducted by more structural instrument under larger body of subjects to systematically explore the phenomenon. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.