GEG Foundation
Galaxy Entertainment Group Website
繁體中文
简体中文

About Us

Foundation Initiatives

GalaxyArt

What's New

Multimedia

Follow Us

Overview

Scheme Background
Principal Investigator
Scheme Partners
Feedback from Scheme Partners
Scheme Implementation
Impact
Parents’ Seminars
Resources for Parents
Collaboration Agreement: The University of Saint Joseph
Related Videos
Related News

Share to

Foundation Initiatives >

GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme

Scheme Background

With Chinese as the primary medium of teaching and communication in Macau, the Foundation believes that developing literacy in Chinese is crucial to a student’s success in school.  The “GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme”, which began as a three-year pilot project in 2016, was initiated with the objective of supporting children, parents and schools on Chinese language development.  Due to the success of the pilot, the Scheme has begun its second phase in 2020 for another three years, which will involve a collaboration with the University of Saint Joseph’s Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education, with the objective of enabling the Scheme to eventually take root in Macau, with continuing research and further implementation within the kindergarten system in Macau.

The main pillars of the Scheme are Education & Training, and Research.

Education & Training

Two seed schools participated in the pilot Scheme, with teacher training conducted for all kindergarten teachers at the two schools.  At least four other seed schools have so far been recruited to join the Scheme’s second phase.  During the pilot Scheme, K3 children, who were identified as lagging behind in Chinese language acquisition, received small group intervention and achieved noticeable improvements.  The pilot Scheme also conducted a “Parent Seminar Series” comprising three age-appropriate sessions for the three kindergarten grades at the two seed schools, which focused on helping parents build their child’s language skills outside of the classroom.

Research

The Foundation hopes that a Macau-wide language corpus for kindergarten can be developed in the coming years, together with a refined screening tool and an intervention manual for teachers.

GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme Facebook page:

Principal Investigator

Professor Cheng Pui Wan is the principal investigator to the Scheme.  Professor Cheng is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where her teaching areas include psychology of learning, specific learning disabilities, special educational needs and special education, and classroom management.  Professor Cheng had been involved in numerous research grants and projects, most of which dealt with literacy difficulties, specific learning difficulties, psychology and pedagogy in handwriting and learning Chinese, and particularly in the areas of early intervention.

Scheme Partners

Collaborating Institution

Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education 
University of Saint Joseph, Macau

USJ-logo
Seed Schools

Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima - Secção Chinesa
Escola Cham Son de Macau
Escola Nossa Senhora de Fátima
Escola Secundária Lou Hau
Escola da Associação Geral das Mulheres de Macau
Escola Dom João Paulino

SRL-logo
MBC-logo
fatima-logo
louhau-logo
fuluen-logo
EDJP-logo

Feedback from Scheme Partners

“Mastery of ‘reading’ as a skill enables children understand the world, go back in time to learn about history and to learn about new discoveries. However, this skill is not easy to master and building a solid language and literacy foundation in the early years is crucial to their future learning and development. The GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme creates a safe and solid base for children as they embark on this learning journey as it incorporates developmentally appropriate activities which allows them to experience the joy of reading.”
Professor Cheng Pui-wan, Principal Investigator
“The teachers’ training has really enhanced our teachers’ understanding of language teaching as well as professional development. I have noticed that students which were identified as slow readers had significantly improved and, more importantly, they became more motivated and interested in learning. The teachers who led the intervention groups were very encouraged and satisfied with the outcome. Our school is very pleased with the overall outcome and has even revamped the kindergarten language curriculum to help the students build a solid language foundation from kindergarten and nurture their love for reading so that they can confidently step into the next stage of learning. ”
Colegio de Santa Rosa de Lima
“The Scheme has made teachers view language teaching in a different light. The teacher training has improved their teaching skills and, at the same time, made them realize that language ability is crucial in gaining knowledge and being able to express oneself. We have enhanced our language curriculum based on the data collected and our teachers now know how to design the language content according to the students’ age. The Scheme works well with all our students, including those who are weaker in language and may need a bit more help. Parents of our students also are supportive of the Scheme and they agree that it has improved their child’s language skills.”
Macau Baptist College
13

Scheme Implementation

Teacher Training
Basic Teacher Training

The Scheme’s Project Team, comprising academics and specialists in their respective fields in literacy acquisition and development, conducted basic teacher training for all kindergarten teachers in all participating seed schools during the pilot phase of the Scheme.  Beginning in the second phase of the Scheme, Macau-wide teacher training sessions are being conducted with accreditation from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, with training hours qualifying for Continuing Education Credits (Category 1) for participants.

Advanced Teacher Training

The Scheme’s Project Team also supervised and assisted the seed schools to implement small group intervention, targeting K3 children who have been screened as being at-risk of delayed Chinese language development and providing the seed schools with school-based review of their syllabuses and supplementary teaching materials, together with suggestions on small group intervention design and implementation.
The Project Team will continue to conduct progress reviews during implementation of the small group intervention exercises with teachers, both before, during and after intervention sessions, so as to assist teachers in continuing to develop and evolve their teaching methods, improve course design and highlight difficulties encountered by particular students and related methods of resolution.

Teachers’ Conference

A Teachers’ Conference was held in April 2019 to share the results of the pilot Scheme with school administrators and teachers across Macau.  The Conference was attended by representatives from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau as well as about 200 teachers from 25 schools in Macau.  Teachers from the two seed schools shared their teaching experiences and how they had witnessed the improvements of students in both normal and intervention groups after participating in the Scheme.  The teaching materials developed and used in the small group intervention were also put on display.

Macau-wide Teacher Training

Starting in the second phase of the Scheme, the Project Team, in collaboration with the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, has begun offering basic teacher training open to all kindergarten teachers in Macau.  The training is offered over two full-day sessions (12 hours), and teachers participating in the training will earn hours towards teachers’ Continuing Education Credits (Category 1).

Teacher Training at Escola Oficial Zheng Guanying, 16/23rd November 2019

The GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme’s key mission is to help build a strong foundation for children’s Chinese literacy development, with teacher training being one of its key initiatives in improving the quality of Chinese language instruction for kindergarten teachers.  The first Macau-wide “Basic Teacher Training” sessions, comprising the first two of four modules, were held on 16th and 23rd of November, 2019, with over 160 teachers participating over the two days.

Modules 3 & 4 was originally scheduled in March 2020, but due to the pandemic, these sessions have now been postponed for the first quarter of 2021.

Teacher Training at the University of Saint Joseph, 31 October 2020

Despite the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic, the “Basic Teacher Training” session conducted by the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme was successfully held on the campus of the University of Saint Joseph on 31 October 2020.  Only 30 participants were allowed to attend the training onsite due to social distancing measures, and with border controls, trainers based in Hong Kong participated via video conferencing.

The training on the day consisted of modules 1 & 2 of the Basic Teacher Training module.  The Scheme’s Principal Investigator, Professor Cheng Pui Wan opened the introductory session over video conferencing, assisted by Dr Maranda Mak of the University of Macau co-leading onsite.

The afternoon session on foundation of language acquisition was led by Ms Terry Tse, Assistant Director on the Project Team instructing from Hong Kong.  Ms Amanda Lei, head kindergarten teacher from Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa), co-led onsite assisting on small groups hands-on exercises with participating teachers.

Teacher training is a main pillar of the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme.  Previous teacher training sessions conducted by the Project Team had been well attended; further sessions will be held in the first quarter of next year, to comprise modules 3 and 4 of the Basic Teacher Training curriculum.

One-on-One Screening

The Project Team had devised a short one-on-one screening tool for kindergarten children in order to assess their Chinese language proficiency and, as importantly, gauge their proficiency level relative to their peers.  With assistance from school administrators and teachers, these one-on-one screenings are done towards the end of each academic year in order to establish school-based benchmarks for the different age groups.  

This screening is particularly important for those graduating from K2 as it is used to identify students whose Chinese language proficiency is lagging their peer group, and therefore deemed to be “at risk” of Chinese language acquisition delay.  These students are then encouraged to participate in small group intervention during their K3 academic year, with the hope that the intervention sessions will enable them to improve their Chinese language proficiency during their last year of kindergarten, enabling them to improve their proficiency in line with their peer group before they begin their primary education.

It is hoped that under the Research component of the second phase of this Scheme, a simplified and improved screening tool can be devised in due course to enable teachers to be able to conduct such screening in class.

Small Group Intervention

Small group intervention is conducted during term time for K3 students, identified as “at risk” of Chinese language development delay, with their progress being tracked and monitored.  

The pilot Scheme’s tracking of such results has shown noticeable improvements in children after one year of receiving regular intervention.  Children who received small group intervention were able to catch up to their same age peers, and the skills they learned from the small group sessions could be transferred to large group classes.

Impact

Enhancing Language Learning

The Scheme uses evidence-based practice.  Based on the school-based curriculum for participating seed schools, the professional team analyses the language ability of different age groups of their kindergarten students, and helps to build a language corpus for the particular schools so this can be used to enhance the kindergarten language curriculum.  Doing so enables teachers to re-evaluate their curriculum, and make appropriate adjustments so that they can systematically teach Chinese language, and thus help students build a strong Chinese language foundation.

Feedback from Teachers

• Kindergarten students have great potential.  As long as we (teachers) are willing to put in a little bit of effort, you will see a great change, so do not underestimate your ability.
• I believe that every seed teacher who volunteered to run the intervention groups in the Scheme did so as they want to help students with weaker language abilities.  
• I hope that more teachers will join so they can benefit more students
• The intervention groups have been able to help weaker students make significant improvement and made me understand its philosophy.
• Young children develop language a difference pace.  The intervention groups are very effective in helping those who are slower to catch up.
• The intervention groups have had a positive impact on the students’ learning motivation.  The students now actively participate in both their normal classes as well as in the small groups.
• Prior to intervention, the students knew less words, were slower to say sounds and lacked confidence.  After receiving intervention, all aspects of their language skills had improved, were more self-confident, more motivated to learn and evidently participated more actively in class.
• Through participating in the intervention groups, the students were able to experience the joy of language learning and took interest in learning words in daily life.
• The teacher training improved my skills in teaching small groups as well as large classes.
• In the large class setting, it is harder to cater to the needs of weaker students. In the intervention groups, teachers are able to target their weaknesses and design appropriate educational games to enable them to learn through play and at the same time increase the learning motivation and interest.

Parents’ Seminars

Parents’ Seminars Series

Support and education within the family can have a lasting impact on a child’s learning and development.  The “Parents’ Seminars” are aimed at helping parents build their child’s language skills outside the classroom.  The Parents’ Seminar Series comprises age-appropriate sessions for the three kindergarten grades conducted for parents at the participating schools.  The seminars introduce parents to the appropriate developmental language level expected for their child’s age, as well as methods on how parents can also be involved in helping their child grasp language concepts and boost language skills in everyday life.  Demonstrations, role play and where possible, “live practice sessions” to include students are held during the seminars to enable parents to better understand and grasp the concepts covered.

Target Audience : Parents of K1 Students

Theme: 
Enhancing oral language

Content:
This seminar focuses on how children transition from oral language to reading printed language. Parents will be shown how they can play a role in helping their children enhance their oral vocabulary at home.

Target Audience : Parents of K2 Students

Theme :
Shared Reading: Tips and strategies

Content :
This seminar focuses on how to nurture reading in children. Parents will also be able practice the skills taught during the seminar and are provided with tips on how to select appropriate books for young children.

Target Audience : Parents of K3 Students

Theme :
Preparing to read and write: Fun with reciting and reading

Content :
This seminar focuses on how to enhance children’s recitation and writing skills to help them prepare for the increased language demands when they enter primary school. 

Online Parents Seminar 
Lou Hau High School Affiliated Kindergarten
17 April 2021

On the 17th April, 2021, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme co-hosted with Lou Hau High School Affiliated Kindergarten’s first parent seminar. More than 100 families from all three grades stayed home and participated the seminar on shared reading via Zoom.

Most parents attended the seminar at home with their children, learned from speakers from Project Team members from Macau and Hong Kong over videoconference, to understand the importance of reading and to learn techniques to motivate shared reading. The two directors from the kindergarten were also on hand to encourage parents to actively participate in the shared-reading practice and Q&A sessions, winning book prizes for sharing with their children. 

As the seminar came to an end, teachers turned on their web camera to greet their students and took a “group photo” with all participants.

Parents Seminar 
Escola Dom João Paulino 
10 April 2021

On the 10th of April 2021, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme co-hosted with Escola Dom João Paulino the school’s first parent seminar, with fifteen parents and their children participating.

Speakers from Hong Kong, via video conference, joined Ms Amanda Lei, Director of the Kindergarten of Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa) and Dr Miranda Mak, Assistant Professor from the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau, who conducted the seminar on site.  They illustrated the “three essentials” and “four skills” of shared reading with vivid examples and on-the-spot demonstration.

In addition to the shared reading practice section, each participating family also received a picture book for reading at home, as encouragement for parents to put what they have learnt into practice.

 

Online Parents Seminar 
Macau Baptist College Kindergarten
12 December 2020  

On 12th of December, 2020, the GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme hosted an online Parents Seminar for the kindergarten at the Macau Baptist College.  Close to sixty pairs of parents and children attended the seminar on parent-child reading, which was held via video conferencing.

Principal Lei C.K. of Baptist College kicked off the seminar sharing the positive impact brought by the Scheme after it was implemented at Macau Baptist College three years ago.  Principal Lei was pleased to witness improvements in literacy of his students, and encouraged parents to practise shared reading with their children.  In the first of the seminar’s three sections, Professor Miranda Mak from the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau discussed concepts of the Three Essentials of Reading.  The scheme’s Assistant Director, Terry Tse, then shared Four Interactive Skills of Shared Reading, followed by Professor Cheng Pui Wan, the Scheme’s Principal Investigator, who explained how to combine these skills in real settings with illustrated examples of shared reading.

The seminar included an online interactive game which was actively participated by parents in attendance; their children were also as eager to participate during the seminar.  Head teachers Ms Chen and Ms Choi of the kindergarten were also present to announce winners to the online game, who were be awarded with children books to encourage shared reading.

Online Parents Seminar
Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa)
28th November 2020

On 28th of November, 2020, the “GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme”, together with the kindergarten of Colégio de Santa Rosa de Lima (Secção Chinesa) co-hosted two parent seminars.  In line with social distancing measures advised by the Government, the two seminars were held via video conferencing, so as to ensure both parents and children’s well-being in compliance with safety measures.  Parents and children were able to comfortably, and safely, attend the sessions at home, learning together over the internet.  

Almost one hundred sets of parents and children attended the seminars in the morning session, which was on parent-child shared reading, for parents of K2 students; the Scheme’s Principal Investigator, Professor Cheng Pui Wan opened the session with highlights of the three essentials of shared reading.  Assistant Director Terry Tse went on to elaborate on the four interactive skills of shared reading, followed by Dr Miranda Mak of the University of Macau, who illustrated the applications of these skills in real settings.

For the seminar for parents of K3 students on readiness for Chinese literacy success in primary school, over 90 pairs of parents and children joined the seminar. The seminar pinpointed the critical literacy skills required for a successful transition from kindergarten to primary education in the Chinese language.  Professor Cheng and Ms. Gloria Ho, Assistant Director of the Scheme, imparted parents with the equal importance of sense and reason in parenting with two practical strategies for supporting reading aloud and handwriting.  Dr Mak reinforced these concepts with real cases and examples.

The K2 Parents Seminar on shared reading included a practice session, while both seminars included online interactive games, when parents competed in online interactive games, with winners awarded pictures books to encourage shared reading with their children.

Resources for Parents

Recommended Booklists

During parent seminars, booklists recommending age-appropriate picture books are given out so that parents can use them for shared-reading time with their children.  Book Accession Numbers for each of the books that are available for loan from Macau’s public libraries are also provided.

Videos

Apart from the Parents’ Seminars, the Scheme will be producing videos to teach parents how they can use shared reading as a fun and engaging activity to develop print awareness (pre-reading skills) and at the same time enable them to play an active role in developing their child’s literacy skills outside of the classroom.

Feedback from Parents

• The Parents’ Seminar has enabled me to understand how I can communicate and explain everyday phrases to my child.
• The Parents’ Seminar has taught me how to engage in shared reading with my child. Apart from watching the demonstration, I was able to practice it at the venue.
• The Parents’ Seminar helped me find ‘joy’ in shared reading and taught me how to get my child interested in reading.
• The speaker made everything very interesting and used videos and pictures to help us better understand.
• After participating in the Scheme, there is obvious improvement in my child’s word recognition ability, and he developed an interested in reading books.
• My daughter is more able to express herself after joining the Scheme. She now will proactively ask about words she does not recognize and like to go to the library.  Each evening she will select a book to read with us.
• The Scheme has helped my child recognize more Chinese characters. My child will proactively read out the words he sees on billboards.
• My child loves the Scheme.  He will share the new characters he has learned at school with me when he comes home.
• The Scheme uses a fun approach to teaching.  As children learn words through playing the games, it increases their learning motivation.
• The information from the Scheme is very interesting and can meet the needs of my daughter.

Collaboration Agreement: The University of Saint Joseph

Beginning in the second phase of the Scheme, a collaboration agreement has been reached with the University of Saint Joseph’s Bishop Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education (the “Centre”), in research towards the development of a Macau-wide Kindergarten language corpus.  It is also hoped that a screening tool can also be developed for teachers to enable a more streamlined process in identifying children at-risk of delayed Chinese language acquisition.  The collaboration will eventually incorporate all teacher training under the Centre, enabling the Scheme to take root in Macau as a sustainable project beyond the Foundation’s funding period, enabling adoption of the Scheme in more kindergartens in Macau.

Announcement from the Domingos Lam Centre for Research in Education at the University of Saint Joseph

Related Videos

GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme - Part 1

With Chinese as the primary medium of teaching and communication in Macau, the Foundation believes that developing literacy in Chinese is crucial to a student’s success in school.  The "GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme” in 2016 was initiated with the objective of supporting children, parents and schools on Chinese language development for kindergarten-aged children based on evidence-based practice, and providing early intervention for children lagging behind in Chinese language acquisition.  The Scheme conducted a “Parents’ Seminar Series” comprising age-appropriate sessions for the three kindergarten grades, focusing on helping parents build their child’s language skills outside the classroom.

GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme - Part 2

Under the "GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme”, students from the Scheme’s participating kindergartens were screened each year, with K3 children who were identified as lagging behind in the Chinese language being invited to receive small group intervention.  The results from the intervention exercises had shown noticeable improvements in these children after having received regular intervention for one academic year.  Children who received small group intervention were able to catch up to their same age peers in their Chinese language abilities, and the language skills they learned from the small group sessions could be transferred to their regular classes.  Aside from their language skills being improved, results also showed that these children became more self-confident, more motivated to learn and evidently participated more actively in class.

The Three Basic Foundations of Reading

Language learning begins with reading.  Parents reading with their children will not only nurture their interest in reading, but also helps to improve their vocabulary and reading ability.  The three basic foundations of reading, text awareness, spoken vocabulary and story structure, shall be reinforced during shared reading; research has indicated that a child’s ability to read correlate positively to their academic success.  Shared reading is an important stage of your child’s development.

The Four Tricks of Shared Reading

To encourage and motivate children to read, it is important that parents start with shared reading. There are four simple “tricks” to shared reading: 
Query (問): through asking questions to pique the interest of the child, and to also allow the child space to think, recall and anticipate the story’s development, and enabling the child to express her thoughts; 
Compliment (讚): encourage the child’s behaviour and attitude through constant affirmation and appreciation of the child’s participation; 
Expand (充): “fill in the banks”, to help build the child’s vocabulary, and learn to express their thoughts; and 
Practise (練): verbalising different sentence structures, and to strengthen what they are learning through repetition.

The Five Key Points of Reciting

After shared reading with their children, parents may recite the story book with the children again, to reinforce their reading and narrating abilities.

Related News

21 July, 2020 | JPG

【Macau Daily】GEG Chinese Literacy Development Scheme Supports Language Development

Share to

More Foundation Initiatives

GEG Cultural & Academic Fund

The interest in the Portuguese language anchors on both political, economic and cultural reasons, and a growing interest not only in Macau, but in other Portuguese-speaking countries to actively participate and explore...
Foundation Initiatives
Follow Us
© 2020 GEG Foundation. All right reserved.