Early exposure to bilingualism is hindering students' learning, an academic said yesterday.
Professor Chen Hsuan-chih of Chinese University's department of psychology, made the comment after a survey showed university students read Chinese much more poorly than their counterparts on the mainland and in Taiwan.
Teaching of both the Chinese and English languages to students as young as kindergarten age hindered their learning, said Professor Chen, who conducted the survey of 100 Hong Kong and mainland university students.
He said the eye movement of Hong Kong students was slower and the time spent on each character was longer before they could fully understand the text.
Given the same article to read, Hong Kong students on average spent 231 milliseconds reading a Chinese character at first sight while the mainland students spent 198 milliseconds.
The average 'gaze duration' on each character for the Hong Kong students was 253 milliseconds, while for mainland students it was 201.
