Reading Literacy and Digital Reading in HK

With the global trend and the government's effort of promoting the use of technology in education, students nowadays learn differently in different areas. Students require new skills to tackle the new challenges in their learning.

The traditional reading skills, such as skimming, scanning, intensive and extensive reading, seem to be insufficient in the fast-changing learning environment. Apart from print reading, students are often engaged in digital reading nowadays. Skills supporting students' digital reading become increasly important. Efficient nevigation enables students to look for meaningful information from texts. With the popularity of computer usage among Hong Kong students, it was surprising to know that a significant number of students actually encountered problems locating target information from digital texts.

PISA's focus on both print reading and digital reading probably gives language teacher a new perspective of students' literacy development. Apart from the traditional reading skills, teachers should also consider incorporating the use of technology in their teaching and classroom, so as to facilitate students' development of essential skills for doing digital reading.