Charting the landscape of L2 Chinese literacy research: A scoping review of reading and writing studies

Reading and writing are central components of second language (L2) development, yet research on L2 Chinese literacy remains unevenly conceptualized and methodologically fragmented. This scoping review synthesizes empirical studies on L2 Chinese reading and writing published between 1988 and 2024 to map research foci, construct operationalizations, and methodological trends. Following systematic database and journal searches, 260 studies published in English and Chinese were analyzed across dimensions including skill focus, text type, writing modality, research design, and participant characteristics. Results show a persistent emphasis on reading over writing, a strong bias toward character‐ and word‐level operationalizations, and a widespread treatment of writing as handwriting, often without explicit justification. Research is predominantly quantitative and cross‐sectional, with limited longitudinal or classroom‐embedded designs and inconsistent reporting of proficiency and multilingual backgrounds. By identifying dominant trends and underexplored areas—particularly discourse‐level literacy, digital modalities, and curriculum‐embedded research—this review provides a foundation for more robust and pedagogically‐meaningful research on L2 Chinese literacy from which relevant and justifiable pedagogical implications could be more meaningfully drawn.