博思會自成為國際讀寫障礙協會全球合作夥伴 (The International Dyslexia Association Global Partners)後，積極與鄰國夥伴互相聯繫及交流心得。 本會的課程及服務經理 教育心理學家 招麗儀女士， 獲邀參與由新加坡讀寫障礙協會(Dyslexia Association of Singapore, DAS) 於2022年6月23及24日舉辦的「第八屆特殊學習困難聯合研討會2022」(The 8th UNITE SPLD Conference 2022)。就有關「及早識別讀寫障礙」(“Don’t wait for your child to fail – The importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis”) 議題，在研討會與來自亞州各地的成員，分享香港扶持讀寫障礙學童方面的發展進程，以及博思會在此進程中扮演的角色。 論壇中，除了招姑娘的分享之外，來自新加坡、印度及印尼的講者亦分別分享了他們的學習文化、學童的識字年齡及識別讀寫障礙學童的工具等。各地文化雖異，但各人均認同「及早識別讀寫障礙」的重要性。

及早為孩子識別讀寫障礙，

盡早作出支援，能有效提升學習成效！

According to converging evidence from foreign and local studies, signs of reading and writing difficulties could be discovered early in preschool years before any formal diagnosis. This allows early literacy intervention, which could help alleviate children’s stress in preschool learning, facilitate their transitioning to primary school, and even prevent possible emotional and behavioural challenges that stem from learning.    

To support the learning of pre-schoolers at risk of learning difficulties, The Pathways Foundation (Pathways), a non-governmental organization which strives to bridge the learning gap of children with dyslexia, designed an early reading intervention program, the “Pathways Preschool Chinese Programme”. The program integrates picture books reading with interactive language and literacy activities to enhance children’s language and literacy development. To evaluate the program effectiveness, a research was jointly conducted by Pathways and the trainees of the Master of Social Sciences in Educational Psychology Programme supervised by Prof. Lucy Hsu of the University of Hong Kong.

In the present study, 95 children studying in K3 were recruited from local kindergartens. The sample consisted of 61 children with at-risk reading and writing difficulties and 34 typically developing children. Among the at-risk pre-schoolers, 31 children had received 12 sessions of early literacy group training. All participants were assessed prior to and immediately after the training on their language and literacy abilities, including discourse comprehension, oral vocabulary, narrative production, word reading, reading fluency, morphological awareness, print awareness and reading motivation.

The result has shown that compared to at-risk children without training, those with training had significantly better performance in discourse comprehension, oral vocabulary, word reading and reading fluency. Their discourse comprehension ability was found to have even caught up with the typically developing children. This study provides research evidence for the potential of the “Pathways Preschool Chinese Programme” as an effective early language and literacy training for children with at-risk reading and writing difficulties. It is hoped that the program could be promoted to more mainstream kindergartens in the future in order to benefit more children in need.