**4. Appraisal of the work done in Hong Kong**

The following parts summarize the critique made by Ngan-Keung (2008) on the adequacy and effectiveness of the efforts paid to the dyslexic services.

The actions aiming to satisfy the ever rising parental and professional needs include:


These actions were somehow successful which could be reflected by the increase in the awareness among primary school teachers and social workers and hence better acceptance of towards the dyslexia students and provision of some simple accommodations in classes and examinations.

However, most if not all efforts were put on primary education only. This might be due to the misconception that dyslexia is merely a short-term learning difficulty. There is nothing to concern about further education or employment.

In view of this, parents started advocating for tailor-made policies from government and more collaboration among various government departments and concern groups. With many struggles, there have been a number of achievements. SLD has finally been included in the Hong Kong Rehabilitation Programme Plan. The Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing for Junior Secondary School Students was published in 2007. More awareness has also been attained among secondary schools, Labor and Welfare Department, and community rehabilitation centers on the importance of lifelong support to the individuals with dyslexia.

Nevertheless, there is still much room for improvement.

The school support to students with dyslexia remains very insufficient and ineffective. It could be attributed to the lack of knowledge and teaching methods in teachers and lack of resources and guidance in schools from the government. Both students and parents thus suffer a lot. Students have poor confidence and self-esteem. Some of them had emotional and psychological problems and even committed suicide. Parents' burdens (both psychological and financial) had never been small. A study revealed that about 55% of

Dyslexia in Hong Kong: Challenges and Opportunities 43

therapists and social workers. Both instrumental (e.g. financial) and emotional needs of

Having gaining the experiences over the past two decades, evidence-based practice is

Each written language has its unique characteristics and format according to its origin and development. Alphabetic languages emphasize on smoothness and continuity in their written forms, whereas Chinese characters contain sharp turns of stroke and demand frequent pen lifts (Tseng, 1998). As mentioned earlier, the problem of handwriting would appear to be more critical as Chinese characters are typically characterized by its logographic nature and its complexity with multiple stroke sequence and directions (Lam et al, 2011). The configuration of stroke patterns in Chinese characters do not give any clue in where to start and which stroke to follow while writing a character. Writing in Chinese also involves complex geometric figuration and stroke arrangement within a squared-area. Different composition, proportion and orientation of the parts in Chinese characters can form different characters and carry total different meanings and pronunciation. Therefore, research should focus on evaluation and training of students with dyslexia in writing

In the past decade, educators and health professionals often relied on subjective judgment to comment and assess handwriting performance of students. Some researchers and educators tried to evaluate handwriting performance of students using speed and accuracy as the criteria to define good and bad writing (Tseng & Chow, 2000; Tseng & Hsueh, 1997). Most of these handwriting assessments mainly emphasized on the handwriting speed. They could not provide information regarding the process including pen pressure while writing, writing time, pause time (air time) etc. These factors could reflect the underlying problems of handwriting (Rosenblum et al., 2006a; Rosenblum, et al., 2006b). Researchers in recent years also suggested that the process of handwriting is also an important area to explore the underlying problems in handwriting, which can be helpful in identifying specific

A commercial software system "Optimized Action Sequence Interpreter System (OASIS)" was developed to measure the handwriting speed, pen in air and ground time using the tablet (Smits-Engelsman, et al., 2003). However, this system is rather cumbersome and not user friendly. Another software, the Penmanship Objective Evaluation Tool (POET) was developed by Rosenblum and her team in Israel. The POET can be used to capture the data generated from the WACOM tablet to assess the writing speed, ground time, pen in air time, and pen pressure during the process of writing. Nevertheless, the POET software was not commercially available and only meant for conducting research studies in this area because the system adopted the Mathlab software. There is a strong need to validate an objective and

regarded as an important direction for the future development of dyslexic services.

parents should be acknowledged and addressed.

**5.1 Writing Chinese and English words** 

**5.2 Objective evaluation of handwriting performance** 

handwriting difficulties (Rosenblum et al., 2003).

**5. Ahead** 

Chinese characters.

parents had negative thoughts during taking care of children with dyslexia, more than 40% had insomnia and depression, and as high as 30% needed to receive professional counseling. Worse still, these psychological issues did not get proper and prompt attention. As for financial aspect, additional expenses are inevitably required for caring children with dyslexia. The same study showed that 80% of families needed to spend extra money for the study skills workshops, tutorial groups, and occupational therapy and/or physiotherapy interventions. The average extra money spent per month ranged from HK \$1001 to \$2000. Families with children with dyslexia are not entitled to receive any financial subsidies from government or EDB. While the New Funding Model grant launched in primary schools adopts a whole-school approach to create a supportive learning environment for dyslexic students (such as special teaching, and accommodations in classes, school examinations and public examinations), no assurance system is developed for measuring the extent that the students can benefit from it such as improvement in academic performance or personal confidence and motivation. Alarmingly, only 13.7% of parents realized that their children were receiving support under the Model. Worse still, as many as 40% of the parents did not find the support useful or simply knew nothing about such school subsidy. Due to such unclear intervention and insufficient communication between schools and parents, parents have to try to seek other sources of support in which community is a choice. In view of this great demand, NGOs and private centers are offering more and more services such as assessment, learning or studying skills tutorials, emotional management programs, self-confidence development programs, potential development programs, and multi-sensory training etc. The trainers are merely social workers and other non-professionals, and the targets are primary school students only but not including those senior ones.

Unfortunately, the services offered by NGOs are not satisfactory. Despite the fact that only half of the respondents were aware of the services offered by the nearby NGOs, half among those who knew the services refused to use the services due to bad outcomes and poor quality of the trainers.

There are other drawbacks in current services including but not limited to the followings:


Hence, there is a very urgent need to formulate and strictly enforce good school policy. The continuum of support should be made possible where services have to be ranged from preschools, primary schools, secondary schools, vocational training institutes, universities to employment markets. Evidence-based teaching methods and materials for Chinese students with dyslexia would enhance the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the interventions. Updated and advanced training has to be provided to the personnel engaged including principals, teachers, educational psychologists, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists and social workers. Both instrumental (e.g. financial) and emotional needs of parents should be acknowledged and addressed.
