Children should be made to feel that reading is fun and has no purpose other than to be fun. It is precisely this "no other purpose" that makes children enjoy the activity.
Children's language is always full of "good" and "bad" things. I will now borrow from their discourse patterns and talk about what is good and worth promoting in children's reading outside the classroom and what is bad and should be avoided. Let me simply refer to the former as "good reading" and the latter as "bad reading" in the voice of a child.
Good reading uses written language as much as possible, while bad reading leaves behind the written word and uses a lot of spoken language.
This is true for reading when children can't read and adults are telling them stories.
When parents tell stories to their children, they try to tell them in colloquial speech because they are worried that the child will not understand. This is not a good idea. The right approach is to try to tell stories to children in standard, vocabulary-rich language from the very beginning. Expose your child to books with plots and words as early as possible, and from the moment you buy him a book with written instructions, "read" the story to him, not "tell" it. This is explained in more detail in the book "Let children literacy is not difficult" article, here is not repeated.
Good reading requires fast reading, bad reading requires slow reading.
One of the most boring mistakes some parents and teachers make when it comes to reading outside the classroom is asking children to read slowly, word for word. This is not true.
There are three ways to measure how well a person reads: comprehension, memorization, and speed. These three aspects complement and reinforce each other.
Speed is a very important aspect of reading ability. People who read word by word have the lowest reading ability, while those who read line by line are better, and those who can reach "ten lines at a glance" are the best. One eye ten lines is a metaphor, referring to a person's reading has reached a very skilled, comfortable degree, reading a wide perspective, attention to a wide range, a sweep can be extended from a line to several lines.
Reading must reach a semi-automatic level in order for the content read to be grasped and absorbed as a whole and to facilitate comprehension and memory. Reading word by word hinders the formation of this semi-automatic state, and the perceived reading material is fragmented and incomplete.
Human reading speed is neither innate nor subjective, and cannot be easily acquired by certain training methods. Speed depends on the amount of reading, and is naturally generated on the basis of "quantity. Children make amazing progress in this area. A young student who loves to read quickly develops a reading speed that often exceeds that of adults who also love to read, because they read with a simple mind and are eager to know the rest of the story. Children who do not read similarly read at roughly the same speed. So there is no need to do anything artificially to improve reading speed, just make sure your child has enough reading.
My daughter Yuan Yuan finished reading all of Jin Yong's martial arts novels when she was in elementary school, fourteen in total, about thirty or forty books. I only bought her a set of "Yitian Tu Long Ji", the rest were rented to see. The rent was 50 cents a day per book. She started reading slowly, but soon read faster and faster, and in the case of school every day, each book only cost 1 to 1.5 yuan, that is, 2 to 3 days to read; when it came to holidays, she read one book a day. I estimated that the cumulative reading time for this little 8-year-old child, who was reading a 200,000-word novel, was only about four or five hours. This speed is not magical; other children who read so many books would naturally reach this speed.
There are a few details to keep in mind when it comes to increasing your child's reading speed.
First, don't let your child read low and out loud.
Children will often be asked to read texts in a low voice in school, and that is just reading the text, not in the category of reading outside the classroom that we are talking about here. Reading outside the classroom should not be done out loud. Reading out loud is not a good way to understand the meaning of the text, nor does it increase speed, and is a bad way to read.
Second, do not ask your child to look up words in the dictionary as soon as you encounter them.
When a child is reading at the beginning, there must be a lot of vocabulary, and constantly looking up the dictionary is a constant disturbance to reading and will destroy his interest. When a child first starts to read a large work, he or she will have little confidence in his or her literacy and will worry about whether or not he or she will be able to read. Parents should instead encourage their children that it's okay to have words they don't know, as long as they can read them. If there are some vocabulary words that interfere with comprehension or are key words in the work, ask the parent. This makes it convenient for the child and gives a sense of ease in reading. I have seen parents who know the word but prefer not to tell their children and let them look it up in the dictionary, probably thinking that looking it up will make them remember it better. This approach doesn't make sense, and the truth is that most children don't like to be interrupted by anything in the reading process. It is important to respect your child's own choice so that he can read happily and smoothly.
Third, if possible, try to rent or borrow books to read.
Renting or borrowing books can facilitate your child to finish reading a book as soon as possible. Yuan Yuan reads a full set of Jin Yong martial arts novels basically by renting them. She consciously reads them in a timely manner in order to save the rent, borrowing each book for three days at most, and one a day during the holidays. Borrow a few more days although it does not cost a few dollars, but about 1 yuan to read a book this feeling is very exciting for her, which inadvertently also promotes her desire to read quickly.
Good reading cares about how much is read, bad reading counts for how much is remembered.
Many parents always like to examine how much their child has "remembered" after reading a book.
One parent, too, took the advice of others and agreed to let her child read extracurricular books. When the child has just read the first novel, the parents can't wait to ask the child to retell the story, memorize the "beautiful passages", ask the child to use some words and materials from the novel in writing, and even ask the child to write after reading. When the child reads the second novel, she blames the child for forgetting almost all of the storyline and characters in the first novel, thinking that the previous book was a waste of time. This is simply a deliberate attempt by the parent to create a stumbling block for the child. This reflects two problems with parents: one is that they do not understand reading, and the other is that they are too utilitarian. This can only result in the child's aversion to reading.
When a child is confronted with a book, if someone asks him to memorize it, he will shift his attention to memorization and put his interest in reading on the back burner. Once the child realizes that so many tasks await him after reading a book, he will not want to go back to reading.
By destroying interest, you are killing reading.
Children should be made to feel that reading is fun and has no purpose other than to be fun. It is this "no other purpose" that makes children enjoy this activity.
Most of the children's reading is fairy tales and novels. As long as the child likes to read, it means that he is attracted to the story in the book, that he experiences the events together with the characters in the book, and that they finally come to an end together, the book has left a trace in the child's life. Even if he forgets the name of the main character of a novel he read three months ago, it cannot be said that he has read it in vain.
As for the recitation of some "beautifully written passages" in the work, it is not necessarily related to the learning of language. If the passage is so beautiful that it moves the child, he will naturally imitate and remember it; if the "beautiful passage" is chosen by the parents, the child does not necessarily recognize it as beautiful, so the recitation is not meaningful. Reading is a silent influence, and this is also true of language. The most important thing about language learning is to develop your own language organization and style. Instead of reciting a passage that your child doesn't like, let him spend the time reading one more book.
As the saying goes, "An insider knows how to read, an outsider knows how to read". The extracurricular reading at the primary and secondary school level is almost always at the "amateur" stage, and it is good that children can watch the "lively" stage. Parents and teachers better not rush to let children read a book to see the meaning, experience that feeling, remember how many things. If you are not interested in your child watching TV or playing games, you should be interested in your child's reading.
The function of reading is to "inculcate" and not to "carry". It may not be obvious to the eye, but if he reads enough, sooner or later the richness of the child's heritage will emerge.
The fact is that the less parents demand inappropriate memorization and recitation from children, the more knowledge they will acquire through reading. Sukhomlinsky has studied this in depth, he found that "the amount of knowledge acquired by a person also depends on the emotional color of mental work: if the spiritual interaction with books is a pleasure for a person, and not for the purpose of memorization, then a large number of things, truths and regularities will easily enter his consciousness.
Good reading reads words, bad reading reads pictures.
A parent said his child all day reading, he gave his child the money, the child mostly used to buy books, a set of dozens of books, read in a few days, but his child's essay level is very poor, I do not know what is going on.
I asked him what kind of books his children read, and he said that basically they were all comic books - no wonder.
I said to the parent, reading comics is not reading, comics are not books, comics are just TV in the form of books. You say your child has been "reading", but in fact he has been "watching TV".
Today's society is in an era of "reading pictures". The so-called "reading pictures" is to watch comics, TV or computer, etc., is the image based way to receive information. The advent of the picture-reading era has had an impact on traditional reading. A child born in the 1960s, who grew up in an environment of information scarcity, will read a book by chance after he goes to middle school, and his interest in reading may be established; but a child born in the 1990s, who is surrounded by various information stimuli since birth, will be more interested in images if he spends most of his childhood in front of TV, and images occupy his input channel. The best time to build interest in reading text is missed, and it is difficult to develop interest in reading later.
Nowadays, there are too many children suffering from "TV obsession", which is related to some parents' ideas. Although some parents also hope that their children grow up to be a person who loves to read, but do not care about children's early reading, the child's early reading is seen as dispensable. Some think that there is knowledge on TV, so children can watch more TV to grow knowledge; some think that children do not know how many words before watching TV, and then read when they know more words; others think that children should live freely, as long as they finish their homework, what he wants to do. They don't realize that this is a missed opportunity, and that this kind of thinking makes children miss out on a good habit. This loss will most likely last a lifetime.
"Reading pictures" does not replace "reading words". The reason why "reading words" is better than "reading pictures" is because of the following reasons.
The word is an abstract linguistic symbol that stimulates the development of children's language centers, and this symbol is the same thing as the symbols that children will use in their future studies, and as they are exposed to more reading, they will become more proficient and comfortable with the use of this symbol in their curriculum. This is a simple statement of how "reading" can make a child smart.
Comics, television, and computers are all about engaging images, especially television, which is a stimulating signal that does not require any conversion or interaction, and which the child simply sits in front of and passively receives. Watching television can certainly teach children more, but its "picture-reading" approach and passive receptivity are of little use in intellectual enlightenment compared to reading. If a preschooler spends much of his time in front of the TV, his intellectual stimulation is compromised. From the time he enters elementary school, his learning ability will be lower than that of children who read regularly.
Moreover, children who are used to "reading pictures" are used to passive acceptance and not used to active absorption, and they often show a lack of willpower in learning. The famous Taiwanese cultural scholar Li Ao said in his usual fierce tone that "television is a machine for mass-producing fools.
The earlier a child starts to "read", the better. Reading is not necessarily related to literacy, and it has nothing to do with grade level, and can be started at any time. Children's earliest reading is listening to their parents tell stories, from parents to children slowly transition to their own reading, from reading simple comic books slowly transition to reading written works, from the content of simple fairy tales slowly transition to masterpieces and so on. If you do it, these transitions will come very naturally.
Children by nature love to read, and those who show a dislike for reading do so because their parents do not provide them with the right reading environment at the right time. Either they rarely buy books at home; or they buy books and are too lazy to tell their children; or they use the TV all day to coax their children, in short, children are isolated from reading since childhood.
In fact, "reading words" is not completely opposed to "reading pictures", these two types of reading can coexist in children's lives. My daughter, Yuan Yuan, also enjoys various "reading" activities. She has always enjoyed watching cartoons since she was a child, and she still watches them regularly when she goes to college. Her interest in reading has been steadily developing for a long time, and she knows how to prioritize her reading time and content according to her needs.
A child who grows up spending most of his spare time reading pictures rather than reading words is still in the early stages of reading, and the range of intellectual growth that reading brings is unlikely to be realized. This loss stems from the fact that the "word reading" activities of his early life did not occur in time - a great pity. Shouldn't parents and teachers, and indeed society as a whole, be blamed for the low regard in which children are held for reading?
In addition, parents are reminded to let their children read original books, not "abbreviated" or "reduced" books.
"Abbreviated books" refer to abridged versions of famous novels that have been heavily abridged to make them simpler in word count, content and language. I think this is an act of making a fresh apple into a dried fruit, or at least that's the impression I've gotten from the few so-called "children's editions" of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that I've seen in bookstores. It is advisable to choose the original version of the book for your child from a high-profile publisher.
The "reduced version" refers to the kind of book where the total number of words is not reduced, but the text is reduced and each page is arranged in a dense manner. This kind of book may mostly come from some unknown small publishers or pirate hands. For example, making a book out of "Dream of the Red Chamber". Such a book may only be convenient to carry, but reading is very tired, reading feeling is not good, easy to make children bored; in addition, the typos may also be more. So don't give your child a book in miniature either.
Everyone likes "good things" and dislikes "bad things", and children distinguish between good and bad. The traces left on their pure life negatives, like a piece of white paper, are inevitably linked to the good and bad details of their growth. Education is all in the details, every seemingly small "good" and "bad" details, the impact on children can be huge. Parents and teachers should try to provide children with "good reading" and avoid "bad reading", which is an integral part of providing children with a good education.