The proposed study Bilingual Reading 2023 (BR2023) is the sixth in a series examining trends in children’s Chinese and English reading attainment, habits and attitudes, and evaluating literacy-relate policies and practices in Hong Kong. The BR study adopts the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA’s) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which provides comparative data on reading attainment of grade four children worldwide comparison. While PIRLS assessments in Hong Kong have been conducted in Chinese, the BR studies innovatively administers both Chinese and English reading tests.

Approximately 40 school principals, 80 Chinese and English language teachers, 2,400 parents and 2,400 Primary 4 students will be involved in BR2023. Baseline data about students’ reading attainment, demographic background, home support, school policies, curricula and classroom practices will be assembled into a background data bank. With the assistance of surveys and research reference groups, the data will be analyzed to evaluate the influences of educational policies and practices such as reading instructional approaches on students’ reading performance.

BR2023, in combination with BR2004, BR2007, BR2010, BR2013 and BR2016, addresses the prevailing lack of large-scale trend studies on bilingual reading literacy by meticulously tracking, describing and examining changes in bilingual literacies in Hong Kong across two decades. BR2023 has three objectives.

Firstly, by adding novel subscales of motivation, it will examine the relationships between reading attainment, engagement and motivation, with the aim of interpreting the phenomenon of high score low motivation found in Hong Kong students’ reading.

Second, it will also test the hypothesized association between Chinese and English in terms of the impact of strategy use on reading performance, and potentially inform enhancements in second language acquisition.

Finally, it will also scrutinize the impact of medium of instruction (MOI) across the curriculum and in Chinese language classrooms on bilingual reading performance, providing empirical evidence for evaluation of MOI effectiveness and policy decisions on the controversial topic of whether to use a more globally-used language or students’ mother tongue in the education system.

In short, the findings of BR2023 will provide a platform for reflecting on practice and making decisions about how to enhance bilingual reading literacies. Thus, it will be of interest to policy makers, curriculum planners, reading material and assessment designers teachers, parents, and most importantly, and beneficial to students.

The Project period runs from January 2023 to December 2024 funded by University Grants Committee (UGC) General Research Fund [1]. Dr. CM Cheong, member of the CACLER, applied and mentioned the Centre as part of the research infrastructure. The co-investigators included Dr. LW Ip and Dr. HW Ng.

[1] https://www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/rgc/funding_opport/grf/