Dr Cathy FONG Yui Chi is currently an Assistant Professor of the Department of Early Childhood Education, the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Her research interests are in language and literacy development and reading difficulties. For her doctoral dissertation, she conducted a three-year longitudinal study in language and reading development among young Chinese children. She has coauthored journal-article and book-chapter publications on literacy acquisition and reading difficulties. With the completion of her Ph.D. training, she also obtained a professional qualification to practice as educational psychologist in Hong Kong. In the past two years, she had been the project director/postdoctoral research fellow with the READ and WRITE project in the department of psychology at the University of Hong Kong. She leads a project on the development of a new diagnostic tool for students with specific learning difficulties in Hong Kong. She has also provided supporting services for kindergartens and practicing educational psychologists in Hong Kong on early identification of children at risk of reading difficulties.

Language and literacy acqustion; language comprehension difficulties