Within the core curriculum of primary education, the standard of both Chinese and English, especially writing ability, has attracted much attention of educators, parents and the public. Experienced educationists involved in Chinese language teaching and assessment have an opinion that young people's abilities in reading and writing have dropped in recent years. It might be a consequence came along with compulsory education as there is a great increase of individual differences among pupils that makes teaching and learning very difficult. There is an urgent need to find ways to make up the gap and guarantee at least a minimum educational attainment of all pupils. As art is a core subject in primary schools in Hong Kong, this study aims to examine the effect of art appreciation in art lessons on Chinese writing ability in some primary 3 pupils in a Chinese community.

在語文教學的領域中，讀文教學是學生學習語文知識的媒體之一。學生透過教材，學會了語文的基礎知識。這些基礎知識，是他們自學能力的根基。語文最基礎的知識，莫過於識字，學生識字愈多，他們表達能力和理解能力也愈好。是故在小學中國語文的教學中，識字教學佔著很重要的地位。在教與學的過程中，老師在教導學生識字以後，經常會對學生的學習成效作出評估。默寫，是測量學生學習成效的方法之一。香港絕大多數的小學，都會在每星期內安排一個教節，進行默寫。然而，在進行默寫的時候，老師們所忽略的是「教」，他們將默寫長期鎖定在「評核」的範疇內，以致默寫成了學生 的負擔，也給他們造成了很大的壓力。就過往的調查顯示，默書在同學的心目中，是第二不受歡迎的中文範疇(李子建、梁振威、高慕蓮，1999)。本研究嘗試對上述研究作出 跟進，探討同學們不喜歡默寫的原因，並就同學的意見和默寫的作用，進行行動研究， 為默寫教學找出一個雙嬴的教與學。

本文有三個目的：(一) 找出香港中學教師常用的實用文體；(二) 了解中學校長及教師對教師實用文的語體(文言 / 白話)、格式(橫寫 / 直寫)要求；(三)根據研究結果探討一套適合中學教師的實用文課程。研究員根據中港台共58本應用文書籍設計了一份問卷，就教師實用文的語體、格式及常用文體收集意見。研究員在1998年4月中向全港約440所中學的校長寄出問卷，共回收213份問卷，回答率為48.4% 統計數子顯示傳統直寫的方式已漸漸被橫寫取代；語體選擇方面則大部分回應者認為要視乎需要而選用文言或白話；文體方面，最常用的是「通告」，「提案」則最少用；文體難度以「新聞稿」排在首位，「備忘」、「通知」和「便條」被視作最容易寫作的文體。總括而言，大部分香港中學校長認為實用文應以橫寫為主；語體則可視乎需要而選用文言或白話；常用文體有「通告」、「會議紀錄」、「家長信」、「會議議程」、「報告」、「邀請信」、「演講詞」、「佈告」、「推薦信」和「規則」等；寫作難度較高的文體則為「新聞稿」、「題辭」、「教育短論」、「建議書」、「推薦信」、「評論」、「演講詞」、「計劃」、「試卷分析」和「財政報告」等。師資培訓者在設計和檢討寫作課程時，可參考本研究的數據以增強課程的實用性。
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of oral language skills, linguistic skills, and transcription skills to Chinese written composition among Grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Measures assessing verbal working memory, oral language skills, linguistic skills (i.e., syntactic skills and discourse skills), transcription skills (i.e., spelling), and written composition were administered to Chinese fourth graders (N = 259). Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that only spelling and syntactic skills contributed significant unique variance to written composition. The relevance of the differences between the spoken Cantonese dialect and Modern Standard Written Chinese to these findings concerning the development of children's written composition is explored.
[Copyright of Discourse Processes: a multidisciplinary journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2013.841070]