The impact of blogging on Hong Kong primary school students' bilingual reading literacy

This study looked at the types of blog consulted by 1,298 Primary 4 students in Hong Kong and whether such consultation influenced performance on standardised tests of Chinese and English reading comprehension. When students were asked if they consulted Chinese and English blogs, 42% said they looked at Chinese blogs and 19% said they looked at English blogs. This difference was anticipated since Chinese is the mother tongue of most primary school students in Hong Kong and English is a second language. The themes of sites consulted were categorised into types: the Chinese blogs being able to be categorised into three types, and the English blogs into two. Boys and girls differed in their choice of Chinese and English blog topics and the strength of the students' Chinese and English reading proficiency clearly had some influence on the choice of blogs consulted. Factor analysis was used to group together types of blog and analysis of variance was applied to test differences in performance. With over half of the students saying they did not consult either Chinese or English blogs, it is unwise to draw weighty conclusions about the influence of blogging on reading standards. There was little evidence that regularly consulting the Internet was associated with high grades on either Chinese or English reading tests. Given the large number of students who said they had never consulted blogs, discussion of the analytical outcomes and conclusions are guarded but recommendations are offered. [Author abstract]