FEHD Research

Standing at the forefront of research into education and psychology, the Faculty of Education and Human Development (FEHD) is the leading provider of educational courses and research at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). We conduct high-quality research that addresses educational, social, and policy issues of global significance.

Article of the Month

Discover this month’s featured article, showcasing cutting-edge research and impactful ideas from our Faculty’s experts across disciplines.

August 2026

How Syntactic Awareness Empowers Bilingual Children’s Reading Comprehension

For many bilingual children in Hong Kong, reading comprehension extends far beyond recognising words in a text. A child may be able to pronounce individual words accurately, yet still struggle to understand the meaning of a sentence or a whole passage. This challenge is especially important in Hong Kong, where children often learn and read in both Chinese as their first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2).

Research led by Dr Tong Xiuhong, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), examines a key ability that may help explain why some bilingual children become strong readers while others experience difficulties: syntactic awareness.

Syntactic awareness refers to the ability to understand and manipulate the structure of sentences and grammatical rules that govern them. In simple terms, it means knowing how sentences are put together, such as who is doing an action, what the action is, and how different parts of a sentence fit together. These skills help children move beyond reading individual words and support their understanding of connected text.

One line of Dr Tong’s research focuses on Hong Kong Chinese–English bilingual children and examined how syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension in both L1 Chinese and L2 English. Specifically, three key questions were examined. First, they wanted to know whether children with stronger syntactic awareness would show better growth in reading comprehension over time. Second, they examined how similarities and differences between Chinese and English sentence structures would affect how children use syntactic skills across languages. Third, they investigated whether weakness in syntactic awareness could help identify children who struggle with reading comprehension in Chinese, English, or both. To answer these questions, the team conducted a series of studies, including a meta-analysis of previous research, longitudinal research with Hong Kong bilingual children, and detailed assessments of Chinese–English bilinguals.

A Strong Link between Syntactic awareness and Reading Comprehension across Chinese and English

A comprehensive meta-analysis conducted by Dr Tong’s research team, and published in Review of Educational Research revealed that children who were better at understanding sentence structure were also better at understanding what they read. This pattern was found in both English and Chinese, with a similar strong relationship in the two languages. In other words, sentence-level skills appear to a language-universal factor that influence reading comprehension across languages.

The team also collected three years of data from more than 200 participants. These longitudinal findings showed that syntactic awareness predicted later reading comprehension development in both Chinese and English. Children who were better at understanding sentence structure were therefore more likely to develop stronger reading comprehension over time.

For teachers and parents, this finding is meaningful because it shifts attention from word reading alone to how children understand the structure of sentences. Reading comprehension depends not only on recognising individual words, but also on knowing how those words work together.

Shared Sentence Patterns Help Children Transfer Skills

The project also looked closely at how bilingual children may transfer reading-related skills from one language to another. Chinese and English are different languages, but they also share some sentence structures. The research team therefore developed new syntactic awareness tasks to separate language-shared structures from language-unique structures.

Language-shared structures are sentence patterns that work similarly in both Chinese and English, such as some sentences that follow a subject–verb–object order. Language-unique structures, by contrast, involve sentence patterns where the order of words or sentence parts differs between the two languages.

This comparison allowed the team to examine which types of structures supported cross-language transfer. The findings showed that the crossover effect of syntactic awareness on reading comprehension came mainly from shared syntactic structures between Chinese and English. That is, when sentence patterns are similar across the two languages, children are better able to use what they know in one language to support reading comprehension in the other.

This finding provides support for the interactive transfer model, which suggests that transfer between languages is more likely when the two languages share relevant features. It also has practical value for teaching: when helping bilingual children improve reading comprehension, teachers may benefit from drawing attention to sentence structures that Chinese and English have in common first.

From Sentence Skills to Word Reading and Comprehension

The project further showed that syntactic awareness supports reading comprehension not only directly, but also indirectly through word reading. This means that children’s understanding of sentence structure may help them predict and recognise words more effectively as they read. For example, when reading a sentence, a child may use its structure to work out what kind of word should come next. If the sentence requires a noun, the child can narrow down the possibilities and make better sense of the text. This process can support both word reading and wider comprehension. This indirect pathway from syntactic awareness to reading comprehension through word reading is a novel contribution, extending what is known about reading development in both monolingual and bilingual readers.

Spotting Reading Difficulties Earlier

Another important part of the project focused on children who experience reading comprehension difficulties. Using regression analysis, the team identified different groups of comprehenders among Hong Kong Chinese–English bilingual children: children with difficulties in Chinese only, English only, both languages, average comprehenders, and good comprehenders. The results showed that children who struggled in both Chinese and English had weaker syntactic awareness than average and good comprehenders in both languages. Children who had difficulties in only one language also showed weaker syntactic awareness than typically developing peers, although their performance was stronger than that of children with difficulties in both languages. This suggests that weak syntactic awareness may serve as a useful indicator for identifying poor comprehenders among Hong Kong Chinese–English bilingual children. For schools, this message is practical. That is, checking children’s sentence-level skills may help teachers identify those who need support earlier and provide help that is better matched to their needs.

Turning Research into Practice

The findings have both theoretical and practical value. The project strengthens understanding of how syntactic awareness contributes to bilingual reading development and provides evidence that shared sentence structures can support transfer between Chinese and English. It also shows that syntactic awareness may be a common marker of reading comprehension difficulties across both languages.

To bring these findings into practice, the team developed BiSyntax Builder, an interactive educational app designed to support syntactic learning in both Chinese and English for school-age bilingual children in Hong Kong. The app turns research insights into practical learning activities, helping children strengthen the sentence skills that support reading comprehension in both languages.

Overall, Dr Tong’s research highlights a simple but powerful message: helping bilingual children understand how sentences work may help them become better readers. By paying closer attention to sentence structure, educators and parents can support children not only in reading words, but also in making meaning from what they read.

This research, titled “The Intriguing Role of Syntactic Awareness in One Language and Reading Comprehension Difficulty in Another Language in Chinese-English Bilingual Children,” is supported by the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

To learn more about the studies involved in this project, please visit:

A meta-analysis of the relation between syntactic skills and reading comprehension: a cross-linguistic and developmental investigation: https://doi-org.ezproxy.eduhk.hk/10.3102/00346543241228185
Speech prosody and reading comprehension in Chinese–English bilingual children: The mediating role of syntactic awareness: https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00026
Syntactic awareness matters: uncovering reading comprehension difficulties in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children: https://doi-org.ezproxy.eduhk.hk/10.1007/s11881-022-00268-y
How Chinese–English Bilingual Fourth Graders Draw on Syntactic Awareness in Reading Comprehension: Within- and Cross-Language Effects: https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.400 (This paper was a finalist for the Best Journal Article Award of the Faculty of Education and Human Development at EdUHK.)