This study investigates the impact of Filipina domestic workers (FilDWs), a marginalized group in Hong Kong (HK), on HK children's language development. It focusses on FilDWs' influence on the second language (L2) English of bilingual HK primary school children attending an English Medium of Instruction school. The elements investigated are L2…

The literacy development of d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) children has always been a matter of grave concern among educators, and grammatical knowledge is said to constitute a major component such development. The present article reports on a study that examined the development of Chinese grammar among groups of d/Dhh and hearing children who…

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students in Hong Kong face great challenges in academic learning since for decades oral language has been the only means of communication in classrooms. The establishment of the Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrollment in Deaf Education (SLCO) Program aims to provide an accessible mainstream environment that supports DHH…

Syntax, or sentence structure, plays a role in reading comprehension, but how students draw on their awareness of syntax in their reading remains unclear; the mechanism is even more ambiguous in bilingual students. In this study, we evaluated the direct and indirect contributions of syntactic awareness on first-language Chinese and second-language…

Cross-language transfer happens in bilingual reading development. However, little is known about whether L1 affects L2 spelling development. In addition, longitudinal studies are needed to examine the L1-L2 relations developmentally from the beginning of literacy learning. We tested whether and which Chinese (L1) literacy-related skill(s) in…

While extensive quantitative research has shed light on the cognitive mechanisms of dyslexia, few mixed-methods studies have been conducted to examine the perceptions of and attitudes towards learning in children with dyslexia, especially in Hong Kong, a bilingual context. In addition, the validity of the metaphor elicitation technique, which was…

The study examined the relationships between self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies used by 2,894 bilingual primary school students and their Chinese and English reading test performance. Exploratory factor analysis of the self-reported SRL strategy use questionnaire yielded two factors of strategies (planning and monitoring) used in both…

This study examined whether syntactic awareness was related to reading comprehension difficulties in either first language (L1) Chinese or second language (L2) English, or both, among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Parallel L1 and L2 metalinguistic and reading measures, including syntactic word-order, morphological awareness,…

This study examined whether, and if so how, L1 and L2 segmental and suprasegmental phonological awareness is longitudinally related to L1 and L2 reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Using a regression approach, we identified five types of comprehenders, i.e., 11 poor-Chinese/average-English…

This paper describes a project, including the design, development, and use of a mobile application (referred to as application hereafter) for learning Chinese as a second language in a bilingual primary school. The application was designed for iPod Touch Apple technology with the purpose to facilitate learning of a fundamental set of 200 Chinese…

One hundred four Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders completed a questionnaire on eight separate motivational subscales related to reading separately for Chinese as a first language (L1) and English as a foreign language (EFL) in addition to measures of both Chinese and English reading comprehension. Motivations related to self-efficacy, curiosity,…

This study looked at the types of blog consulted by 1,298 Primary 4 students in Hong Kong and whether such consultation influenced performance on standardised tests of Chinese and English reading comprehension. When students were asked if they consulted Chinese and English blogs, 42% said they looked at Chinese blogs and 19% said they looked at…