Promoting Chinese and English Bi-Scriptal Reading Development through Phonological Training: Behavioural Intervention and Neural Evaluation

This study will combine behavioural training and a neurophysiological approach (i.e., event-related potentials (ERPs)) to investigate three key questions: 1) Does Pinyin-to-Chinese training program (i.e., designed to teach children Pinyin knowledge) enhance Hong Kong trilingual children’s phonological awareness in L1 Chinese and word reading? 2) Does Phoneme-to- English phonemic training program (i.e., designed to teach children’s English phonemic knowledge) facilitate L2 English phonological awareness and word reading?3) Is there any possible transfer effect of Pinyin training on children’s English phonological skills and word reading?4) Are there any changes at the neural level after receiving Pinyin and English phonemic training and, if so, how do the behavioural training effects correlate with brain activities?

Funding Source: RGC - General Research Fund (GRF)