The study examined current practices in Classical Chinese (CC) reading instruction in Hong Kong and the relationship between different instructional practices and students' strategy use and motivation in CC reading. A total of 519 secondary students voluntarily responded to a questionnaire that measured their perception of CC reading instruction, strategy use, and motivation. The findings indicate while teachers frequently teach both the language and content aspects of CC reading, the teacher-centered approach they are now adopting is ineffective in facilitating students' CC reading development. Relations between different instructional approaches and students' strategy use and motivation in CC reading are discussed.

那年,我被選派到香港進行中文教學支援。在一年時間里,我深入香港中小學校,一邊開展中文教學支援活動,一邊學習各中小學校的教學和管理,體會香港教育的人文性和獨特性,與當地師生結下了深厚的情誼。

The Chinese Language, unlike the Latin alphabetic family, is an ideographic writing system, which makes learning to write in Chinese a real challenge even for native speakers. In Hong Kong, most children start learning to write Chinese Characters (Hanzi) form in kindergarten and acquire about 4,000 commonly used forms in primary school. The teachers usually adopt the only two official traditional Chinese Characters references promulgate by governments, including Lexical Lists for Chinese Learning in Hong Kong by Hong Kong Education Bureau and Teacher’s Handbook of Standard Form of Chinese Characters by Taiwan Ministry of Education. However, some frequently used Hanzi are found to be in different forms under these two standards. The usage of simplified Chinese characters from mainland China further complicates the issue. Furthermore, even though some high-frequency word forms are aligned under these two standards, prospective teachers may still make mistakes due to the complexity of Hanzi Characters form and their calligraphic variations. Writing in different form or wrong way of Hanzi form may also affect Hanzi stroke count and order. As prospective teacher is the role model of students in handwriting, it is important to find out the common mistakes made by the prospective teacher. In this study, we will investigate the potential problems to the Hanzi form handwriting of Hong Kong prospective teachers and the rationale behind the intrigues.

This study analyses the results of an investigation of wrongly written Chinese characters of Hong Kong university students. In recent years, many local university students display poor Chinese language proficiency while writing. A study was conducted in a Chinese writing course for year one undergraduate students of The Education University of Hong Kong. The data about wrongly written characters were collected from the students’ assignments and test scripts. To explore the reasons behind university students writing the wrong Chinese character frequently, the “errors analysis” by James (1998) was employed to determine the reasons and impact of making such mistakes. The result shows that many students wrote wrong Chinese characters, because they are mainly affected by the characters’ structures, pronunciations and meanings. Moreover, some students insisted that they are just careless or lack concentration in general. Besides the common reasons above, some students suggest a new reason for writing wrong Chinese characters: in past decades, Japanese culture has come to have an influence on many young people around the world. In Hong Kong, many youngsters are influenced by Japanese culture deeply, so in the end they will sometimes mix up and misuse the Chinese characters (especially the simplified Chinese characters which are used in mainland China) and Japanese characters. Thus, they will wrongly use the Japanese characters in their Chinese writing (especially handwriting). At the end of the study, it suggests some solutions to enhance students’ Chinese language proficiency in this aspect and prevent them from writing incorrect characters again.

Young Chinese children acquire a substantial amount of Chinese characters during their early years. Because Character recognition is foundational to higher level Chinese reading (e.g., text comprehension, it is crucial to identify factors associated with early acquisition of Chinese characters. Chinese is a morpho-syllabic language in which each character corresponds to one morpheme and one syllable. Morphemes can be combined further in specific ways to make up words. In the kindergarten period from ages 3 to 6, Chinese children progress gradually from learning some single-character words to the vast majority of double-character words. In Hong Kong, traditional kindergartens typically start to teach children to read Chinese characters in the second semester of their first kindergarten year, when they are approximately 3.5 years old. Most Hong Kong children learn Chinese in the form of traditional script with Cantonese, which is their native language, as the medium of instruction through a teaching approach of “look and say.” Language impairment often places children at risk for reading difficulties, suggesting that meta-linguistic skills may contribute to the development of Chinese character recognition. Chinese characters contain rich visual-spatial features and relations (e.g., more than 2,000 different graphic patterns to be learned by novice readers). Consequently, some researchers have suggested that visual-spatial skills may support children’s learning of Chinese characters, especially in beginning readers. The present study aims to examine the contributions of meta-linguistic and visualspatial skills to Chinese character recognition in young Chinese children. A longitudinal sample of 106 Hong Kong Chinese children were tested a total of five times from their first to third kindergarten years. Chinese character recognition, meta-linguistic skills (phonological awareness and visual-orthographic awareness), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual-spatial

2000年起，香港的課程改革倡議用普通話教中文，根捧統計，至今已有半數以上中小學校正在推行。論者認為，“普教中”不但是教學語言的轉換，也是課程、教材、教法以至評估的更新。這項變革牽動中小學語文課程的校本設置，在教學層面上，也對教師的課堂語言及教學策略的運用，提出因應調整的要求。 識字教學是低年級語文教學的重要任務，香港的小學過去大多採取隨文識字的教學模式，通過課文學習，讓學生認識字詞的形音義，進而理解文本，訓練閱讀的能力。由於此前的語文課以粵語授課，識字教學可以充分利用學生的心理詞彙，以他們日常生活中習得字詞的語音或語義為基礎，連繫要學的字形，能較容易掌握生字和新詞。中文科改以普通話為教學語言，因為切斷晰語音層面的勾連，低年級學生便無法利用心理詞彙貫通字形、字音和字義的優勢識字；加上學生生活中缺乏普通話語感，學習字形與字義的同時，還得記憶陌生的語音，既形成新的難點，也加重了學習負擔。 這些年來“普教中”的先導學校參考內地、臺灣等地區的教學經驗，以漢語拼音作為輔助學生識字的工具。不少學校為此設置校本拼音教程，讓學生集中能在較短時間內把拼音通學一遍。語文教師在課上也不斷嘗試摸索，運用拼音教學字詞。觀課所見，教師在實踐中已就拼音識字發展出相應的教學策略，包括讓學生粗通拼音，邊學邊用；語文課上調動運用，從課前預習讀音，到課上自行拼讀字詞﹝個人或小組合作﹞；利用拼音記音、自我正音；定期和系統復習拼音等。不過，也有部分教師對語文課上運用拼音識字似乎還不夠重視，對相應的教學策略也未適當掌握，識字教學的效能可再提升。 “普教中”推行已十多年，因教學語言改變，識字教學的重點與難點有所轉移，但有關的教學對策的探討不多。本文主要從檢視目前學校的實踐經驗及成效切入，通過借鑒不同地區的中文識字教學方法和研究成果，建議引進音節教學的直讀法、漢字標音、以獨立或隨文兩種方式拼讀字音等方法，藉此探尋一套適用於香港普教中情境，能有效突破語音難關，並能促進識字效能的教學策略，供學界參考。

漢字的認讀和害寫是閱讀和寫作的前提，故漢字教學是語文教學的基礎。學生通過漢字識字和寫字的學習，豐富了識字量，為間讀奠基，成為掌握知識、學習的基本知能。識字是對字的形、音、義的掌握，漢字是單音獨體的方塊字，往往是一字一義、一字多音，同音字多、筆劃字形不能透露讀音等等，構成漢字學習的繁難，識字成為小學語文教學首先要解決的一個難題。 香港課程發展議會編訂的《香港小學中國語文建議學習重點﹝試用﹞》﹝2008﹞，是香港教育統籌局的語文教育指導文件之一，其中列出漢字的形音義是語文學習基礎知識的學習重點，包括了漢字的筆劃、筆順、字形間架結構、偏旁、部件、漢語音節的組成、造字法、同音字等等，這成為香港小學語文教科書構思的重要依據。教科書是學生學習的媒介，其創設的條件和環境，對教師的「教」和學生 的「學」皆有極大影響。 本研究以香港三套較通行的小學中國語文教科書為觀察對象，以文本分析法，比較三套教科書中有關識字教材的選擇、重點、識字類型、編列次序、指導策略等，以期釐清識字教學的概念，提升識字教學的素質。研究成果除有助教材編撰者日後教材的編寫外，面對重視學生主體性，積極發展校本課程的當下教育界，這個研究有助教師建構校本課程的參考。 研究發現香港教科書的識字教學設計，主要是隨文分散識字，有知識和能力並重的意識，並有集中識字的安排，但採用的組織方式不同，例如有特設識字單元的，也有在不同單元都加有識字欄目。集中識字的策略也各有偏重，識字重點方面，有識字和寫字並重，有只重視字詞的認讀，而忽略字形的書寫指導，又或寫字指導系統不完備，序列與學生的認知心理有矛盾。