Prof. ZHU Xinhua, Department of Language Science and Technology

How to equip our children with online multimodal reading skills: Report on the results of the Multimodal Reading Research Project for Primary School Students in Chinese Language. Learning & Teaching Expo 2026. Education Bureau, Hong Kong Education City, and Smart City Consortium, Hong Kong, 25-27 June 2026.

Abstract
Responding to educational reforms in the digital era, this study aims to investigate the performance and influencing factors of online multimodal reading among primary school students in Hong Kong. Supported by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong, the research team developed three sets of online multimodal reading tasks to assess approximately 500 local primary school students. The results indicated that the overall accuracy rate of the students was below 50%. When dealing with online texts that integrate hyperlinks, diagrams, and audio-visual elements, students generally faced three major cognitive bottlenecks: difficulties in integrating details across webpages, blurred distinctions between facts and opinions, and low precision in comprehending dynamic information. Their high-level evaluation and critical reading abilities within this reading context were particularly weak. Notably, the performance gap between Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) and Chinese-speaking students narrowed significantly under multimodal scaffolding, suggesting that multimodal materials offer cognitive compensation and boost reading interest. Additionally, boredom and learning grit were significantly negatively and positively correlated with reading performance, respectively, while integration and inferencing skills showed strong positive correlations with reading scores. Based on these findings, this study proposes a "three-in-one" (paper-based, online, and multimodal) reading competency framework.