培養學生高層次閱讀能力，是當前閱讀教學的重要目標，對於小學四年級學生而言尤爲重要，因他們將從「學會閱讀」進入「從閱讀中學習」的階段。過往有不少閱讀策略教學研究，但較少研究聚焦於分析它對提升學生高層次閱讀能力的作用。本研究邀請六所香港本地小學參與研究，在四年級開展教學實驗，實驗班193人，控制班196人，總計389人。實驗班一年中學習六項閱讀策略，控制班無特別安排。對比閱讀前後測結果發現，實驗班成績較控制班進步顯著更大，說明閱讀策略教學可顯著地提升學生高層次閱讀能力。然而，研究也發現，實驗班學生只有在「選取語句」「聯繫經驗」「自提問題」三項策略的應用上有顯著改進。教師教學中出現的一些困難需採取措施加以克服，這凸顯閱讀策略教學成效的複雜性。研究結果可爲將來閱讀教學設計、教師專業發展提供參考。It has long been recognized an important target to develop primary students’ higher-level reading abilities, which is especially true for primary 4 students as they are experiencing the transition from “learn to read” to “read to learn”. Although a large abundant of research have been done on reading strategy, fewer research have focused on its effect on higher level ability. This study has invited six local primary schools to attend a quasi-experiment. Participants were a total of 389 primary 4 students from these schools. Among them, 193 students were classified to experimental classes for which a one-year long intervention of reading strategy instruction was provided, while the remaining 196 students were classified to controlled classes without special arrangement. The results showed that experimental students gained significant higher improvement in reading comprehension performance compared to their controlled counterparts, indicating the positive effect of reading strategy on developing students’ higher-level ability. However, it has also been found that only three out of six taught reading strategy were applied more frequently than before, i.e., selecting sentences, integrating prior experience and self-questioning. Besides, teachers’ concerns were also raised. These suggested the complexity in teaching reading strategy. Nevertheless, findings of this study could be referred to when planning lessons and designing teacher professional development programs in further study. Copyright © 2020 香港教育大學中國語言學系、哥倫比亞大學中文部、中華書局（香港）有限公司.

The way culturally responsive teaching is employed in school settings in non-Western contexts is unclear. The question of how to teach Chinese effectively to ethnic minority (EM) children in Hong Kong has recently attracted much attention because their generally low level of Chinese language proficiency hinders their education and social integration. This study investigated teachers’ competence in utilizing culturally responsive teaching to teach Chinese to EM children in kindergartens. Focus group interviews were conducted with 43 teachers from 20 kindergartens. The results showed that teachers from kindergartens with a high concentration of EM children were more competent in adapting their teaching methods to cater for EM children’s learning styles and educational needs. However, teachers from low concentration kindergartens were less competent in incorporating multicultural elements in curriculum design and teaching materials. They demonstrated a more monocultural mindset in teaching Chinese to EM children. Teachers from high concentration kindergartens developed a better understanding of EM cultures, were more caring and had higher expectations of EM children. Implications for teacher education, school level and policy were discussed. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

The present study examined the contributions of vocabulary knowledge, syntactic skills, and oral narrative skills to sentence reading comprehension among Chinese junior elementary school children. Various language and reading measures were administered to 85 Chinese normally-achieving children at Grades 2 and 3 in Hong Kong. Results showed that vocabulary knowledge and oral narrative skills contributed significantly to word order skills, an important syntactic skill in Chinese. Vocabulary knowledge contributed to word recognition directly and contributed to sentence comprehension indirectly through word recognition and syntactic skills; and syntactic skills contributed to sentence comprehension directly. These findings suggest that while vocabulary knowledge is important for Chinese word reading, syntactic word order plays a central role in Chinese sentence comprehension. The implications of these findings for our theoretical understanding of the Simple View of Reading, as well as reading instruction, will be discussed. Copyright © 2020 Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada.

“Hong Kong and Taiwan adopt the same standard of traditional Chinese characters.” “Characters are pronounced only in those ways specified in the dictionary.” These are some simplistic notions that teachers commonly hold about the standard of correctness of characters. But if we closely examine the actual usage of characters in everyday practice, there exists subtle variants of the characters. This paper reports on the results of our project to identify linguistic variation in characters for raising teachers’ awareness in a teacher education course. Our project focused on those characters in the curriculum and, by gathering multiple sources of data, endeavored to find out what categories of variation existed in these characters. Two such categories of variation, namely, variation in written form and variation in stroke order, are explained in full detail. These results have practical implications to teaching since problems often arise when children adopt a variant of characters different from that of the teachers. Knowledge about possible variants of characters is thus necessary for teachers to appropriately respond to the children. Multiple standards, which teachers should interpret as helpful references rather than dogmatic rules, are recommended. We conclude the paper with suggestions for future research on practical linguistic knowledge for teachers. Copyright © 2020 Centre for Language Studies, National University of Singapore

Background: Studies have shown that word dictation and syntactic skills are significant predictors of written composition performance among Chinese children in elementary grades. However, there is a paucity of research on the bidirectional relationships between these two cognitive‐linguistic skills (i.e., word dictation and syntactic skills) and Chinese writing skills. Methods: This paper reports the findings of a 1‐year longitudinal study tracking the developmental patterns of Chinese writing among students in Grades 3 and 5 in Hong Kong. The participants were administered tasks involving cognitive‐linguistic skills (working memory, word dictation and syntactic skills) and writing skills (narrative writing and expository writing). Results: Multiple regression analysis revealed that word dictation and syntactic skills in Grades 3 and 5 were significant longitudinal predictors of Chinese written composition performance in Grade 4 and Grade 6. Syntactic skills, but not word dictation, contributed a significant amount of unique variance to writing performance after controlling for the autoregressor effect of writing. The results also showed that written composition performance in Grades 3 and 5 contributed unique variance to individual differences in syntactic skills in Grades 4 and 6, after controlling for syntactic skills in the preceding year and other cognitive‐linguistic variables. Conclusion: The patterns of results underscore the significance of syntactic skills in Chinese written composition in upper elementary grades and the bidirectional relationship between syntactic skills and written composition in Chinese. Highlights: What is already known about this topicChinese word dictation, syntactic skills and verbal working memory are the major types of developmental skills important in Chinese writing among children in elementary grades. What this paper addsThe longitudinal contribution of word dictation to writing performance across grades was mediated by the contribution

Integrated writing skills that emphasize integrated use of language skills and multiple source materials have attracted increasing attention in language education globally and locally in Hong Kong. This study examines teachers’ conceptions of integrated writing skills and interviewed twenty-five Chinese language teachers. Three conceptions emerged from the data, representing writing as a composite of disconnected parts (Category1), a logical inquiry (Category 2), and a developmental process (Category 3). As the categories move up, the alignment between teachers’ conceptions and the curriculum objectives increases accordingly, with the purpose of writing instruction ranging from fulfilling examination requirements, enhancing reasoning skills, to developing integrated use of language skills. The findings also reveal that although the development of integrated writing skills has been a critical component of the Chinese language curriculum since the first public examination in 2007, teachers’ receptivity toward it still varied greatly. Insufficient professional training, the legitimacy of integrated writing as a curriculum component, and the fossilization of the public examination were the factors that accounted for the differing attitudes among the teachers. The discourse of integrated writing in the Hong Kong context has been centered around high-stakes testing. The unbalanced discourse resulted in an oversimplified view that conflated the teaching and learning of integrated writing with integrated writing assessment. The study contributes to the conversation between integrated writing curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) on cognitive-linguistic skills, word reading and writing in children from low-SES backgrounds. This study examines differences in cognitive-linguistic skills and word reading and writing across kindergarteners from the low- and middle-SES groups. It also investigates the direct link between SES and children's concurrent Chinese literacy skills and how cognitive-linguistic skills mediate the longitudinal associations between SES and word reading and writing. One hundred and nine children were assessed at Kindergarten K2 (Time 1) and reassessed at Kindergarten K3 (Time 2). Children were administered the measures of vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, executive functioning, Chinese word reading, and Chinese word dictation at both time points. Results revealed that low-SES children performed less well on Chinese word reading and dictation than their middle-SES peers at both time points. Moreover, hierarchical regression and mediation analyses suggested that SES had a direct relation with Chinese word reading at Time 1 after controlling for age and cognitive-linguistic skills, and an indirect link with Chinese word dictation at Time 2 which was fully mediated by phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge at Time 1. The results highlight that SES may exert an impact on children's early Chinese reading and writing and suggest the benefit of improving phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge of low-SES children. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

The present study investigated the executive functioning of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and planning in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and how they related to Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Hong Kong Chinese students at Grade 7 were compared with 57 typically developing readers of chronological-age-matched controls on their performance on working memory, inhibition, shifting, planning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance showed that readers with dyslexia performed worse than the typical readers in executive functioning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension. Hierarchical regressions indicated that working memory, inhibition, and vocabulary knowledge were significant predictors of reading comprehension in L1 after controlling for age, IQ, and group membership. Furthermore, working memory, inhibition, shifting, vocabulary knowledge, and rapid naming contributed uniquely to reading comprehension in L2. Taken together, these findings suggest executive functioning difficulties in Chinese readers with dyslexia and highlight the differential contributions of executive functioning to Chinese and English reading comprehension; working memory and inhibition appear to play an important role in reading comprehension across different languages. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners' L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners' abilities to make associations among the forms, sounds, and meanings of 40 Chinese characters, and administered it to 173 five- and six-year-old L2 kindergarteners in Hong Kong. We found a high model-to-data fit using the two-parameter logistic item response theory model (MSsubscript infit] = 0.87 to 1.07, ps > 0.41). Of the 40 items, 36 exhibited a range of difficulty and good discrimination. Internal consistency reliability and inter-rater reliability were also high. The children scored highest in the category of meaning-sound associations, followed by mapping from meaning to form. The results demonstrate that the instrument is adequately valid and reliable for assessing L2 kindergarteners' character acquisition and imply that child L2 learners may develop abilities to map meanings and sounds prior to their development of form-related mapping. With minor modifications, the developed instrument can be used in various child Chinese L2 programs around the world. Copyright ©Sage Publications Ltd.