The Relationship Between Motivation to Read Chinese and English and Its Impact on the Chinese and English Reading Performance of Chinese Students

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among Hong Kong Chinese students' reading attainment in Chinese and English, their attitudes toward reading, and their self-concept as readers. The sample consisted of 1,232 fourth-grade students from thirty-eight primary schools. Predictably, the students' reading attainment was better when tested in Chinese than in English, their second language. On each test, girls tended to outperform the boys. It was hypothesized that students' Chinese and English reading self-concept and attitudes toward Chinese and English reading would correlate positively with their Chinese and English reading performance. However, no clear and easily interpretable pattern of relationships was found between students' reading attitudes, their self-concepts as readers, and their reading performance. Whereas item analysis showed the reading attainment measures to be highly internally consistent, the responses of the young children in the study to questionnaire probes, particularly to items concerned with selfconcepts as readers, were less homogeneous. The paper explores the strength of the relationship between girls' and boys' scores on English and Chinese reading attainment tests, their attitudes toward reading in English and Chinese, and their self-concept as a reader in each language.