Sk Tse

Text Comprehension in Chinese Children : Relative Contribution of Verbal Working Memory, Pseudoword Reading, Rapid Automatized Naming, and Onset-Rime Phonological Segmentation

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span, tongue twister), 2-character Chinese pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming (letters, numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 518 Chinese children in Hong Kong in Grades 3 to 5. It was hypothesized that verbal working memory, together with a small contribution from the other constructs, would explain individual variation in the childrens text comprehension. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld the hypotheses. Though Chinese pseudoword reading did not play an important mediating role in the effect of verbal working memory on text comprehension, verbal working memory had strong effects on pseudoword reading and text comprehension. The findings on the Chinese language support current Western literature as well as display the differential role of the constructs in Chinese reading comprehension.

Which Agenda? Medium of Instruction Policy in Post-1997 Hong Kong

The mandatory use of mother tongue education in Hong Kong after 1997 met strong objections from the local community. While the government put forward a comprehensive educational agenda to justify the implementation of the policy, this paper raises the question of whether the change in language policy was mainly driven by an educational agenda, or whether there were other underlying agendas. To address the question, the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong is reviewed, and the experience of three decolonised Asian countries, Malaysia, Singapore and India, is discussed. The paper suggests that the political agenda has always played an important role in language policy formulation and implementation. In view of the important role that language plays in nation building and social reconstruction, it is inevitable that Chinese medium instruction will become more and more important. How the government will balance the need to strengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people and the need to maint...

Adapting western pedagogies for Chinese literacy instruction: case studies of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore preschools

Research Findings: Western ideas and progressive pedagogies have been introduced to China (including Shenzhen), Hong Kong, and Singapore to replace traditional Chinese pedagogy. But these imported ideas are not congruent with traditional Chinese culture and thus have encountered resistance from Chinese teachers. The present study observed and analyzed 18 early childhood classrooms in the 3 localities and questioned the class teachers about their respective teaching practices to see how those ideas were actually turned into practice. Whole-class direct instruction was found to be the predominant Chinese pedagogical mode. This indicates that Chinese traditional pedagogy still dominated those Chinese preschool classrooms. Slight societal differences in classroom practice were also found, reflecting the spectrum of openness and Westernization of the 3 cities. Practice or Policy: The findings suggest that people should adapt rather than adopt those pedagogical innovations developed in other sociocultural milieu, as different societies have different social, cultural, and educational traditions. Cultural appropriateness should be seriously considered when choosing the pedagogies to be adapted. Moreover, influences from the culture, language, teachers, parents, resources available, and the prevailing education system should also be taken into consideration when planning for pedagogical reforms.

The acquisition of Cantonese classifiers by preschool children in Hong Kong

The Cantonese language has a complex classifier system and young learners need to pay attention to both the semantics and syntax of classifiers. This study investigated the repertoire of classifiers produced by 492 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in three age groups (3;0, 4;0 and 5;0). Spontaneous utterances produced in 30-minute toy-play contexts were collected and transcribed. Analyses identified a productive repertoire of 73 classifiers in the utterances, which could be appropriately classified into the typology proposed in the present study. An age-related increase in the number of classifier types per child as well as the repertoire size of each group was found. [symbol: see text] go3 (CL) was widely used as the general classifier by the young children. It was also discovered that the three-year-olds were already showing signs of grasping the basic syntax of classifiers. Cognitive, linguistic and contextual influences presumed to shape the evidence are discussed.

Orthographic Knowledge Important in Comprehending Elementary Chinese Text by Users of Alphasyllabaries

Orthographic knowledge in Chinese was hypothesized to affect elementary Chinese text comprehension (four essays) by 80 twelve-year-old ethnic alphasyllabary language users compared with 74 native Chinese speakers at similar reading level. This was tested with two rapid automatized naming tasks; two working memory tasks; three orthographic knowledge tasks in Chinese; and equivalent tasks in English. Multivariate analyses of covariance showed that the two groups were differentiated on most of the linguistic and cognitive tasks. Confirmatory factor analyses found four factors as hypothesized: text comprehension, verbal working memory, orthographic knowledge in Chinese, and orthographic knowledge in English. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that orthographic knowledge in Chinese explained a considerable amount of individual variation in elementary Chinese text comprehension.

Sex differences in syntactic development: Evidence from Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in Hong Kong

Utterances produced during spontaneous play activities by 180 Cantonese-speaking children, ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, were analysed with the focus on declaratives. Syntactic development was gauged in terms of changes in the mean length of utterance, sentence type and structure, syntactic complexity, and verb pattern, and age-related develpments in these were found. Significant sex differences were found in syntactic development, with girls outperforming boys in mean utterance length, some sentence types and structures, and syntactic complexity, with a significant age by sex interaction in the group of 4-year-olds. The period between age 3 and age 4 was identified as critical for syntactic development, as many linguistic changes occurred in this time. Growth in the ability to use compound sentences was found to be the most significant contributor to increased mean length of utterance. Biological, psychological, and sociocontextual factors influencing these sex differences in language performance are explored and discussed. The generality of the educational implications is discussed.

Is the expressive vocabulary of young Cantonese speakers noun or verb dominated

The spontaneous utterances produced by 492 Cantonese‐speaking children aged 36–60 months in 30‐minute toy play contexts were collected. The incidence and percentage of different lexical classes, the ratio of noun and verb types and tokens were calculated. A statistically significant predominance of verb usage was found in the expressive utterances of the children. No similar predominance was found for nouns. Linguistic, cultural and contextual variables possibly underlying these outcomes are explored and discussed.

Bridging the gap: a longitudinal study of the relationship between pedagogical continuity and early Chinese literacy acquisition

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between pedagogical continuity in literacy education and early literacy development by comparing Chinese children in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Stratified random sampling was used to select 24 preschool and Primary 1 classes in four communities catering to middle‐class families in each city. The 24 teachers were interviewed about their teaching methods and views on pedagogical continuity in individual sessions. Further, their teaching activities were videotaped over a period of a week. Their students (n = 758) completed a Chinese literacy attainment test at the beginning and at the end of the same academic year. Analyses indicated that Hong Kong students outperformed their Shenzhen counterparts in Chinese literacy attainment, at both preschool and primary levels, concurrently and longitudinally. This suggests that the holistic approach followed in Hong Kong might have a more positive impact on childrens literacy development than the approach followed in Shenzhen. Implications of the findings for early childhood curriculum reform are discussed.

Enhancing orthographic knowledge helps spelling production in eight-year-old Chinese children at risk for dyslexia

We investigated the effects of enhancing orthographic knowledge on the spelling of Chinese characters and words in 131 eight-year-old Chinese children at risk for dyslexia. The traditional approach (37 children) emphasizing memory and repeated writing was the control condition. The analytic and synthetic approach (ASA, 33 children) stressed insight into character structure. The integrated analytic and synthetic approach added to ASA self-correction and metacognitive activities (INA, 61 children). The children were first asked to write down as many words as possible associated with pictures of home, school, and community; the correctly written words formed the baseline information. The children were then instructed by their classroom teachers in six especially designed short texts and assessed in eight measurable bujian or radical tasks subserving three constructs: morpheme completion, bujian analysis and synthesis and bujian compounding. Multivariate analyses of variance showed that the children in the INA condition outperformed those in the other conditions in three of the measurable bujian tasks. A confirmatory factor analysis verified the stability of the eight tasks and their clustering into three constructs. From these results, we tentatively propose a “bujian sensitivity hypothesis” as a means of helping young Chinese children at risk for spelling disorders.

Sustaining teacher change through participating in a comprehensive approach to teaching Chinese literacy

An overview is presented of a three-year project aimed at helping Chinese language teachers in Taiwan refine ways that Chinese, an ideographic language that differs markedly from alphabetic English, is taught in primary schools. Guided by university staff in Taiwan, Hong Kong University and a Taiwanese non-government social enterprise, 20 experienced Taiwanese Chinese language teachers visited Hong Kong, observed literacy lessons, held in-depth discussions with principals and teachers, and engaged in seminars that helped them reflect on ways to modify practice in Taiwan. Back in Taiwan, they tried out techniques witnessed in Hong Kong, shared their experiences with colleagues in and beyond their own school, and evaluated their relevance for language teaching in Taiwan. Experiences were exchanged via practical demonstrations of techniques, video-recordings of lessons, accounts of new ways to teach Chinese, interviews and progress reports on an Internet forum. The outcomes are an example of positive teacher change.