With the handover in 1997, Hong Kong has adopted the ‘Biliterate and Trilingual’ language policy, which aims at developing citizens who are biliterate in both written Chinese and English as well as trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua, and spoken English. In this chapter, a comprehensive historical review of the development of language education in Hong Kong schools will be given first, followed by a discussion on how the ‘biliterate’ and ‘trilingual’ language policy is currently implemented in Hong Kong primary schools based on findings of an empirical study. Finally, the chapter will conclude by giving some recommendations to policy makers and school administrators to consider when formulating language policies in Hong Kong primary school education. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s).

Adequate reading literacy skills are essential for receiving formal education and subsequently gaining full participation in society. Research into L2 reading demonstrates that L2 vocabulary knowledge is key for developing learners’ L2 reading comprehension. This chapter looks into the vocabulary knowledge measured by word associations and sheds some light on the implication of developing vocabulary knowledge to facilitate young learners’ L2 reading literacy for Hong Kong primary schools. The results show that word knowledge and word class have an important influence on young L2 learners’ word association patterns. A number of implications are proposed, including enlarging children’s vocabulary size to reach a threshold level for L2 reading, utilizing graded readers to control vocabulary and teaching words of different word classes with their preferred collocates. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s).

The global trend of learning English as an L2 in the early years is identifiable in Hong Kong. Cognitively immature pre-primary learners face the dual challenges of coping with formal learning in low L2 exposure contexts. This chapter argues for a specific approach that better fits the learning characteristics and abilities of pre-primary learners who learn an L2 differently from that of older learners. The approach recommends the use of informal instructional strategies like using quality stories together with rich vocabulary activities in the form of games and songs for vocabulary learning and phonological awareness which are essential building blocks for L2 literacy skills. Evidence-based examples from research are cited to show their effect on very young learners’ motivation and interest in learning an L2. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s).