How can improved reading materials enhance reading comprehension of rural left-behind children without teacher guidance?

Abstract

There are currently >6.4 million rural left-behind children in China, referring to children who remain in rural areas while their parents migrate to urban areas for work, and their reading skills are generally poor due to the lack of sufficient teaching staff. This study aimed to investigate how to improve the reading comprehension of these rural left-behind children by improving reading materials without teacher guidance. The study recruited 148 left-behind children from rural areas and used experimental and interview methods to assess the effects of different illustration styles and different numbers of illustrations on reading comprehension of ancient poems. The results showed that the style of illustrations did not significantly affect reading comprehension (p > 0.05). However, the quantity of illustrations was a significant factor (F(1,144)=17.19, p < 0.01, η²=0.11), with providing an illustration for each line of the poem, rather than a single illustration for the entire poem, significantly enhancing children's comprehension of classical poetry. The results of the interviews elucidated the finding that children deepened their understanding of the meaning of the poems by constructing the logic of the plot through the intrinsic connections between the illustrations and integrating them with their life experiences. This finding aids in enhancing rural education for Chinese children, while providing a new research perspective for developing countries to improve rural education quality.