I heard that I have thousands of graded books here, and many educational companies have asked me for authorization to buy books in recent years.
Recently another company came to see me. The requirements for Party A's father to choose books are: the picture should be beautiful, the language should be simple (50-200 words) and the story should be interesting. Is there such a book? There must be.
For example, there is no David in the picture book! The first few books of Step into Reading, Bob Books. But if you want all these books, not to mention the complexity of copyright negotiations will make you doubt your life, even if you find all of them, there are not many. Because: we are a non-native country, most children or families don't know English, let alone people who have English reading habits.
I have come into contact with all kinds of teachers, and I deeply feel that many companies have rushed into the horse without fully thinking about why they should do it.
Although I sell copyright, I also hope that my good products can be used well. You know, the copyright fee is not cheap, but the local processing fee after buying it back is more expensive, not to mention the delayed time and opportunity cost, so I want to tell you something from the heart. I know you are not short of money, but you can do better ~
1. Find out who your library serves.
I have seen various foreign e-book platforms, and I divide them into Amazon, Raz and Xreading, and each platform has its own target audience and usage scenarios. When building a library, we must first think clearly about our own position. Who are your users? Under what circumstances will they use your product?
Amazon is certainly the most familiar to everyone, but we all know that most of the books on it are for adults, and there are fewer picture books for children. Because of Amazon's powerful channels and goodwill, various publishers are also willing to put books on this platform and provide them to readers in a divided form through Amazon's platform. Because there is no one-time copyright purchase cost, the biggest advantage of such platforms is sufficiency. But for most domestic users, it is a big problem that the network speed and usage habits are different.
The key words are: choose, leisure, Kindle.
RAZ: There are many classified reading libraries in Britain, America and Australia. Besides Raz, there are also large reading clubs in Oxford, literature Pro in Xue Le and My On in Renaissance.
Because most of these platforms are developed by publishers themselves, the copyright cost is almost negligible, but it is precisely because publishers do not have the genes of Internet technical talents that many platforms cannot be considered from the perspective of small white users, and the update iteration is slow, requiring the assistance of professionals, at least school teachers.
Keywords: K 12, classified readers
Xreading class: This library is one of the few online reading platforms designed for non-native English speakers. Mainly includes the graded readers of EFL (English as a Foreign Language).
Click to view → first language reading vs. second language reading | reader's confused behavior award
Because this platform was originally aimed at Japanese college students, it is mainly based on chapter books, and low-level graded reading is particularly rare. After the upgrade in 2020, the teacher management function has been upgraded a lot. However, due to copyright and internet speed, it is not fully open to users in China.
Keywords: English learning, homework form
2. Carefully build the whole system (K- 12), starting from your most important age.
First of all, you may not need all of them.
A company once made a survey, and 95% of the books in the library were read less than 3%.
This data fully shows that quantity is not the key, and it is valuable to use it. You can't just say that this book is not good, and then think that changing it will solve the problem. This is putting the cart before the horse. To make an inappropriate analogy, it's like you're divorced because your wife is ugly.
Secondly, if the whole system is made, the cost of design and production is also very high. On the one hand, there are many specifications of books, including horizontal version, vertical version, pictures on the top, words on the bottom and words in the pictures. In order to make the function keys not affect reading, where should the keys be placed to be beautiful and not affect reading? Is it double-sided or single-sided?
Also, from the functional point of view, children and big friends have different needs in English reading. For example, do you want to make a follow-up system? Do you want to make an animation? Do you want to be a reading guide? Do you want a word search function? Do you want to do an AI score after reading it? Do you want to give the teacher administrative authority? Do you want to show the students the book report? Do you want community communication and sharing? In fact, these are not technical problems, but the order and priority of product development. If you can't think clearly, you can only use tactical fuss to cover up your strategic laziness.
3. Grading standards should be selected.
Every library has its own grading standards. Some companies use Lance, while others use AR.
But to tell you in secret, in fact, both of them grade mother tongue books. The biggest bug is that there is no soundtrack for low-level books ~ ~ and this paragraph is what China children need most ~
Xreading uses the grading system of the International Extensive Reading Foundation, which is much more friendly, but the disadvantage is that most mother tongue books are not included.
Therefore, my suggestion is that we can adopt the grading method of reading guidance level (letters A-Z) or the YL grading system of SEG, the largest extensive reading school in Japan, but the landing of these two systems in China needs to be further improved.
If I want to build a library, I will focus on:
K-G2 books/self-made books/simple picture books/many books in a second language.
4. The books of the same level must have sufficient horizontal expansion and a solid foundation.
The most difficult thing in English reading is not to accelerate, but to enlighten. What is difficult is the process from 0 to 1.
Many children can read the first 3-4 grades of the Oxford tree, but they get stuck in the sixth grade. Why is this? Because the Oxford Reading Tree is for children in mother-tongue countries, it is said that these children have long been the basis of 5000- 10000 words, which means that their reading is a process from "illiteracy" to "literacy".
And we are a non-native language environment, and children don't have that foundation. Even after reading dozens of books, my vocabulary is only a few hundred. It is impossible to walk at the speed of a child in a mother-tongue country. At this time, to make up for this shortcoming, it is necessary to "expand horizontally."
No single set of graded reading materials can solve the English learning problems of children in China. You must finish the Oxford tree level, then go to Hyman level, then go to Chinese medicine level, and so on. If you accumulate to a certain extent, you can continue to go up.
When you reach a certain stage, such as grade 5/6 of Oxford Tree, your reading level is basically about 1 level in your native country. If you don't have a good environment for your children to get in touch with English (for example, you live abroad and have English-speaking parents), you need to give your children some books in a second language to make the transition. These books are used to explain complex stories in simple language. Reading these books can constantly strengthen the most commonly used vocabulary in English, improve the fluency and speed of children's reading, and thus reduce the difficulty in reading at a higher level.
5. Don't look at children's grading books from the perspective of adults.
Many teachers complain that paragraph K of some graded reading materials abroad is too simple, and there is a sentence pattern from beginning to end. This is A ... I see ... Can you see mine ...? This part can be skipped. In fact, if you skip this stage, the child will lose a stepping stone to build reading confidence. This is ... I see ... look ... and so on. These seemingly simple repetitive sentences are not only the foundation of children's reading confidence, but also the scaffolding of children's English thinking.
There is a word in pedagogy called "Aha! Moment. As the name implies, it is the moment when students think and suddenly become enlightened. This is the correct posture to cultivate active learners.
The knowledge structure needs a little construction. We all know the learning principle of i+ 1 An ideal learning material should be within the range of your known area, which is slightly more difficult. It will make most learners understand and have confidence in themselves when reading, and at the same time let him have a little new knowledge, so that he can continue to learn. If he can continue to study, then he can.
6. Being able to understand does not mean being able to understand. This is not real reading.
For example, you can probably pronounce the word schistosomiasis as long as you learn to spell it naturally, but do you know what it means? This is why children who simply read aloud are actually not interested in reading.
When reading enlightenment, reading aloud can help children improve their oral English and establish the connection between parts of speech and pronunciation, but only if there is enough "understandable listening input". If you simply read letter by letter, you will know every word in the later period, but you will not be able to read it together, let alone the reading speed.
Think about how we were in reading chinese. We definitely don't read word for word, but read in piles. And this situation must be silent reading. Reading should be an acquisition of information. If children just read the book from beginning to end by themselves, they won't feel any stories and there is no information difference. Where is the fun?
7. Libraries also need strong operation.
Since 20 17, enrollment drainage has become a top priority for all online education companies.
After seeing the successful case of using fish to drain picture books at a small cost, many education companies immediately followed suit. "I also want to build a drainage online library." In recent years, online libraries have come and gone a lot, but there are not many libraries that really "think online".
Book is only the surface of this product, and more importantly, the product logic, incentive mechanism, operation mode and so on behind it. Whether there is a karaoke mode in your audio playback, whether the recordings followed by students can be shared, and whether you can recommend them with AI technology, how to remind users that they have not logged in for a long time? If you just pile some books there, congratulations, your money is wasted. Parents' mobile hard disk is really bigger than yours, and pirated pdf is much richer than yours.
8. I thought that the online celebrity product broke out after winning a whole system.
Teachers who have read English must understand that there is no set of graded reading materials that can completely solve children's English problems. XD reading done by the strongest K 12 education group in China seems to have overturned just yesterday. Are you sure you want to rush in?
In a word, the online library seems simple, but the water is deep. Only by doing your homework and upgrading constantly can you save money.
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