Effectiveness of “Reading to Learn, Learning to Write” pedagogy (R2L) in teaching Chinese to non-Chinese speaking (NCS) primary school students in Hong Kong

Under the Hong Kong language policy of Bi-literacy (Chinese and English in writing) and Tri-lingualism (Cantonese, English and Putonghua in speaking) after Hong Kong handover, Chinese language education to ethnic minority students in Hong Kong has become more and more indispensable. How to effectively instruct non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) students on learning better Chinese at the fundamental level is of great importance. The University of Hong Kong commissioned by The Hong Kong Education Bureau provides services to teach Chinese language to NCS students in Hong Kong after school hours. In the previous years, our focus is on secondary schools, but this year, our project is extended to primary schools. The current study aims to explore the effectiveness of “Reading to Learn, Learning to Write” Pedagogy (R2L) (Rose & Martin, 2012) in teaching Chinese to non-Chinese speaking (NCS) primary school students in Hong Kong. Based on the R2L pedagogy, the teaching and learning cycles were designed to improve students’ ability of Chinese literacy from whole-text level, sentence level and word level. The pedagogic intervention lasts for half a year with the participation of 20 primary school students. The comparison between pre-test and post-test suggests findings concerned with the improvement of Chinese language writing of primary school students at different levels of achievement. Hopefully, this research can help improve Hong Kong NCS students’ Chinese language proficiency in order to facilitate their integration to the local society and set solid foundation for their academic and career development in Hong Kong