Introduction. This study examines the impact of the availability of reading resources in the school, the classroom, the home and the social environment on the reading proficiency of Grade Four primary school students in Hong Kong.Method. Data about the reading performance of Hong Kong students in the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study is reported. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances were analysed.Analysis. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances and their access to out-of-school or in-school reading resources were statistically analysed using multilevel modeling.Findings. The analysis revealed that the number of books at home, the time readers spent reading at home, the literacy facilities in the school and in the home and the children’s use of school and local libraries significantly impacted their reading attainment. The results also showed the positive impact of home reading facilities and encouragement, and the use of public and school resources on the students’ reading attainment.Conclusion. This study applied multilevel modeling to simultaneously evaluate the impact of reading resources located in family, classroom and library on students’ reading attainments. It demonstrated the importance of access to reading materials in home and family environments for students’ reading attainment. Copyright © 2019 the authors.

This study examined the bidirectionality between kindergarten children's executive functioning (EF) and word reading across two time points. Participants were 523 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking children (mean age at Time 2 = 64.59 months; 52.9% male) and their parents. At Time 1, children were administered the measures of EF skills: inhibitory control, attention shifting, working memory and Chinese word reading. They were reassessed with these measures at Time 2 one year later. Results from the cross-lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for child age, gender and parental education levels, children's word reading at Time 1 was significantly predictive of their working memory at Time 2, but that the three EF skills at Time 1 were not predictive of word reading at Time 2. These findings underscored the role of early word reading in promoting children's working memory. Copyright © 2020 UKLA.

Reading is the basis of most learning but is regarded by students as a boring activity in Hong Kong. Therefore, schools in Hong Kong have launched different reading programs to promote reading. One of the successful examples is Reading Battle which gamifies the reading comprehension assessments with points, levels, e-badges and leaderboard on an interactive learning platform. This study looked into how gamification affected the flow experience of students and discussed to what extent the nine flow dimensions were experienced by them, especially the heavy users of the gamified learning platform. This case study chose nine students from four different elementary schools in Hong Kong and adopted a mixed method such as questionnaires and interviews. While many students first did it for external motivation such as getting more points and ranking high on the leaderboard, the study found that the heavy users of Reading Battle became committed to reading and many enjoyed the flow experiences where they seemed to forget about time and discomfort and truly enjoyed the reading process.
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Objectives: It has been supported by various literatures that there is a relation between holistic processing and Chinese character recognition. The present study examined the relation between holistic processing of Chinese characters and literacy ability of Hong Kong preschoolers, in order to explore whether the extent of holistic processing is associated with writing or reading experience. Methods: Participants were 59 local preschoolers (37 boys, 22 girls). The literacy ability of participants was assessed by The Hong Kong Reading Ability Screening Test for Preschool Children (RAST-K); while holistic processing of Chinese characters was measured by adopting the procedures from Hsiao & Cottrell (2009) in a complete composite paradigm (Gauthier & Bukach, 2007). Results: In line with the previous research findings, preschoolers also showed holistic processing in perceiving Chinese characters. Specifically, K2 students were significantly more holistic than K3 students. Such discrepancy may relate to writing experience instead of reading experience since a negative correlation between holistic processing and writing ability was significantly observed. Conclusion: This study had a theoretical contribution on the study of Chinese writing difficulties among preschoolers. Educators and parents may help enhancing the writing ability of preschoolers by leading them to perceive the characters separately, i.e. weakening the holistic processing of Chinese characters. All rights reserved.

當前語文課程及教學研究都十分重視引導學生掌握閱讀策略，但對於小學低年級學生閱讀策略的學習對加強閱讀理解表現有否成效，卻依然存在爭議。針對這一問題，本研究在香港六所本地小學二年級實施了為期一年的閱讀策略教學准實驗。控制班136 人，實驗班148 人。研究表明，教學實驗後，實驗班學生的閱讀理解進步分顯著高於控制班；低水平的閱讀者在閱讀實驗中受益最大。調查問卷顯示，學生在教學實驗後在展示創意、想像畫面兩項策略的應用頻次上有顯著提升。本研究也討論了研究結果對閱讀教學的一些啟發。The current Chinese curriculum and teaching research attach great importance to master reading strategies, but the effects of learning reading strategies among lower graders are still controversial. In response to this research gap, this study implemented a one-year quasi-experiment by teaching P2 students reading strategies among six local primary schools in Hong Kong. There were 136 pupils in the controlled class and 148 in the experimental class. This study demonstrated that after the teaching experiment, students in experimental class had a significant improvement in reading comprehension than that of the controlled class; low level readers benefitted the most from the teaching experiment. Results collected from the questionnaire indicated that students have significantly improved the use of the two strategies (i.e., demonstrating creativity and imaging) when reading independently after teaching experiment. Implications on reading instruction derived from the results were discussed as well. Copyright © 2019 香港教育大學.

This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of verbal and visuospatial memory in Chinese reading comprehension. One hundred twenty-eight Cantonese-speaking children participated in the study at the end of their 3rd year of kindergarten in Hong Kong. Both verbal and visuospatial memory were found to be significantly associated with Chinese reading comprehension. Path analysis showed that visuospatial memory was significantly associated with reading comprehension through word reading. Verbal memory was associated with reading comprehension indirectly through listening comprehension. Additionally, the direct path from visuospatial memory to reading comprehension was significant when word reading and listening comprehension were considered simultaneously. The findings of the direct and unique role of visuospatial memory in reading comprehension in Chinese elaborated and extended our understanding of the simple view of reading in young children in a non-alphabetic language. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature B.V.

This study investigated Hong Kong secondary students' Classical Chinese (CC) reading comprehension, reading motivation, and the effects of different types of motivation on CC reading. Four hundred forty-eight seniors from four secondary schools in Hong Kong voluntarily completed a CC reading comprehension test and a reading motivation questionnaire. Findings indicated that students' CC reading performance was unsatisfactory. They had poor self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in CC reading and read CC texts mainly for extrinsic reasons. While high-achievers had better CC reading comprehension performance and higher extrinsic motivation than low-achievers, they had lower intrinsic motivation. Unlike many previous studies in which intrinsic motivation has been found to be the most optimal type of reading motivation, structural equation modeling indicated that only self-efficacy and extrinsic motivation were significant predictors of students' CC reading comprehension performance after controlling for achievement level. The relation between CC reading and different types of motivation is discussed in light of the special nature of CC and the learning context of Hong Kong.
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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the writing development of Hong Kong kindergarten students over 12 months. They attended 18 kindergartens territory-wide and were followed from June 2002 to June 2003 for the collection of three waves of teacher-rated data at six-month intervals.Design/methodology/approach: First, the construct validity of the translated and culturally adapted version of Morrow's (2012) checklist which assesses writing development was confirmed, considering that the students attended Hong Kong kindergartens who wrote in the Chinese language. The multilevel analysis, which employed corrected measures captured through Wolfe and Chiu's (1999a, 1999b) five-step Rasch scaling method for a common frame of reference, estimated the effects of the factors, namely, student age, gender, class level and schools.Findings: The children's progress over the second six months was also apparently much smaller than the first SIX months for this cohort. The dramatic slow-down in the second six-month period for both cohorts might be partly attributed to the peculiar arrangement of schooling at that time.Research limitations/implications: The recommendation from this study is that random sampling and student test scores on writing need to be taken for the identification of the general trend of young children's writing development in Hong Kong, as well as other Chinese communities alike.Originality/value: The profile of the student's emergent writing development at each six-month follow-up and over the 12 months was explored. Differences between the groups based on age, gender, class level and school in terms of student writing development on average were statistically significant. Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited.

This study examined the longitudinal associations of emotional regulation and school readiness among Chinese kindergarten children. Data were collected from 523 children (mean age at time 1 = 52.42 months; 52.9% male) at two time points separated by approximately 1 year in Hong Kong, China. At times 1 and 2, children's school readiness was assessed by their teachers and parents while their emotional regulation was directly tested. Teachers also rated children's emotional regulation at both time points. The results from the two reciprocal path models showed that, controlling for the corresponding autoregressive effects, school readiness at time 1 was predictive of emotional regulation at time 2. However, emotional regulation at time 1 did not emerge as a significant predictor of school readiness at time 2. Theoretically, these results underscored children's school readiness as a potential contributor to their emotional regulation. Practically, these findings suggested the utility of supporting children's school readiness to foster their emotional regulation. Copyright © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

閱讀與寫作都和文本有關，可通過文類教學聯結從閱讀到寫作的教學。實用文是教材與評估中的主要文類之一，本研究採用「閱讀促進寫作」文類教學法進行實用文的讀寫教學實踐。此教學法以系統功能語言學為基礎，形成從閱讀到寫作的完整教學設計，已證實在英文寫作教學領域有正面效果，但在中文教學及閱讀的應用仍處於發展階段。本研究進一步設計相應的閱讀理解評量表，以香港非華語學生為對象，通過前、後測及訪談等研究工具，收集量化及質性數據。研究結果顯示，「閱讀促進寫作」教學法能提升中文第二語言學習者的閱讀表現達5.9倍，寫作表現進步達1.4倍，且實驗班的讀寫進步幅度均顯著優於對照班，證明此教學法能大幅提升讀寫表現，可進一步推廣及融入於課程設計。Reading and writing are key components of literacy education, while genre pedagogy can be implemented to connect the teaching from reading to writing. Practical text is one of the main genre in teaching materials and assessment. Relevant pedagogy and research should be conducted to provide second language learners the knowledge about genre, context, and function of language about practical writing. Based on the theories of systemic functional linguistics, the “reading to learn, learning to write” (RLLW) pedagogy has demonstrated positive effect of improving English learners’ reading and writing competency. For further development of genre pedagogy in different languages, there is a need to investigate the effect and feasibility of applying RLLW in teaching languages other than English. This article reports on its effect on Chinese as second language education through mixed-method case study research. It proved that RLLW can improve non-Chinese speaking students’ reading performance by 5.9 times and writing performance by 1.4 times higher than pre-test, while both significantly better than the control group. Research findings proved the positive effect of RLLW pedagogy and its potential to be implemented in curriculum. Copyright © 2018 香港中文大學.