Design and Development of an Image-Based System to Facilitate Reading Comprehension of Chinese Classic Literature

This study aims to develop an image-based reading system to help people increase reading comprehension of Chinese classic literature. Nowadays, people have new reading habits with the uses of handheld devices, such as IPhones, IPads. Thus, they are used to reading shorter messages and simple Chinese. It becomes an issue for younger generation, digital natives, to read classical Chinese literature. Therefore, in this study we, using the classical Chinese literature, Dream of the Red Chamber, as an example, try to develop a handheld-device-based system that combines graphic (word clouds) and the Internet to solve this problem. After the system is implemented, we will conduct this study to the college students, who have not read the Dream of the Red Chamber before. Participants will read some specific chapters. Before reading, they will use the word clouds function and create their own infographic. We will administer questionnaires to investigate the effectiveness of the image-based reading system.