Research on Chinese Character Literacy

Click on a button for references to research and research summaries.

Speak First, Read Second: Delayed Introduction of Character is Beneficial

For L1 Readers:
Shu, Hua and Richard C. Anderson. “Learning to Read Chinese: The Development of Metalinguistic Awareness.” Reading Chinese Script, A Cognitive Analysis. Ed. Wang, Inhoff, and Chen. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. 1-18.  
(This is a study of reading acquisition by native speaking Chinese children in China.  They found that children tap into their knowledge of spoken Chinese, using the phonetic element of unfamiliar characters to guess the pronunciation of characters they have not learned. That is, knowing words in their spoken form enhanced their ability to identify the characters used to write the words.)

For CFL Learners:
Dew, James. “Language is Primary, Script is Secondary: The Importance of Gaining a Strong Foundation in the Language Before Devoting Major Efforts to Character Recognition.” 汉字的认知与教学－西方学习者汉字认知国际研讨会 (Proceedings from the Conference on Cognition, Learning and Teaching of Chinese Characters) Ed. Guder, Jiang, and Wan. Web.<http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/Dateien/hanzirenzhi_papers_dew.htm>.

Zhao Jinming (赵金铭). “初级汉语教学的有效途径 “先语后文”辩证” (“An effective approach to elementary Chinese teaching: The dialectic of ‘Starting with Oral Work and Character teaching follows”). Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Teaching Chinese as a foreign language.  2010. Web. <http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-SJHY201103012.htm>

Awareness of Component Parts

For native speakers/L1 readers:
Flores d’Arcais, “Graphemic, Phonological, and Semantic Activation Processes during the Recognition of Chinese Characters.” Language Processing in Chinese. Ed.  Chen, Hsuan Chi and Ovid Tzeng. Elsevier Sciences Publishers. 1992. 37-66.   (L1 readers rely upon radicals, phonetics, and repeating components to retain and retrieve characters)

Shu, Hua and Richard C. Anderson. “Learning to Read Chinese: The Development of Metalinguistic Awareness.” Reading Chinese Script, A Cognitive Analysis. Ed. Wang, Inhoff, and Chen. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. 1-18.  
(This is a study of reading acquisition by native speaking Chinese children in China.  They found that elementary school aged children are aware that certain parts of characters convey phonetic information and certain parts convey semantic information, and they are able to use that awareness to guess the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters and to correctly guess the form of characters for words they knew only in spoken form. 

Anderson, Richard, Wenling Li, Yu-Min Ku, Hua Shu, and NingningWu. “Use of Partial Information in Learning to Read Chinese Characters.” Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, Theories and Applications. Journal of Educational Psychology 95.1 (2003): 52-57.
(Successful L1 readers of Chinese identify and use phonetic cues in characters to retain and recognize characters.)

Feldman, Laurie B. and Witina W.T. Siok. “Semantic Radicals in Phonetic Compounds: Implications for Visual Character Recognition in Chinese.” Reading Chinese Script.   Ed. Wang, Jian, Albrecht W. Inhoff, and Hsuan-Chih Chen. Mahway and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. 19-35.
(They find that L1 readers pay attention to semantic radicals, and that transparent semantic radicals enhance identification while opaque semantic radicals interfere with character identification.

For CFL Learners
Shen, Helen. “Level of Cognitive Processing: Effects on Character Learning Among Non-Native Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language.” Language and Education 18.2 (2004): 167-183.  
(She finds that instructor guided ‘elaboration’ incorporated in character instruction, including focus on radicals and phonetics, greatly enhances character retention when compared with either rote memorization.)

Ke, Chuanren. “Effects of strategies on the learning of Chinese characters among foreign language students.” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association 33.2 (1998): 93-112.   
(He found that CFL learners consider learning radicals to be more effective than learning phonetic components. They were split almost 50-50 as to which they believed to be more effective:  learning character structure or writing characters repetitively. )

Shen, Helen. “Analysis of Radical Knowledge Development Among Beginning CFL Learners.” Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. Ed. Everson, Michael and Helen Shen. Honolulu: NFLRC, 2010. 45-65. (This study builds on the findings of previous studies that awareness of the recurring parts of characters aids in recognition and production. It examines the perceived difficulty that students have in identifying and memorizing the semantic or phonetic role of recurrent parts of characters.)

Focus on the First Strokes

For L1 Learners
Huang, Jong-Tsun and Man-Ying Wang. “From Unit to Gestalt: Perceptual Dynamics in Recognizing Chinese Characters.” Language Processing in Chinese. Ed. Chen, Hsuan-Chih and Ovid Tzeng, Amsterdam: Elsevier Sciences Publishers, 1992. 3-35.

(They find that fluent native readers retrieve characters by stroke order; fluent L1 readers rely on the top left side of characters, and in most cases, the first strokes of a character, in their identification of characters.)

Stroke Order is Important

Studies on L1 readers - native speaker/Chinese educated
Research on Chinese aphasics
Tzeng, Ovid J. L., Daisy L. Hung, Sylvia Chen, Jori Wu, Mao-Song Hsi. “Processing Chinese logographs by Chinese brain damaged patients.” Graphonomics: Contemporary Research in Handwriting, Volume 37. Ed. Kao H. S. R, G.P. van Galen, R. Hoosain. Amsterdam: Elsevier Sciences Publishers, 1986. 357-375.
(The findings “support the existence of a graphomotoric code in the recognition of Chinese characters.” Specifically, for L1 readers who have suffered aphasia, stroke order is one tool in their identification of characters.  They more readily identify characters when their strokes are presented in the standard stroke order.  Presenting the strokes of characters in non-standard order appears to interfere with recognition. )

Research on normal-brained adult L1 Chinese native speakers
Huang, Jong-Tsun and Man-Ying Wang. “From Unit to Gestalt: Perceptual Dynamics in Recognizing Chinese Characters.” Language Processing in Chinese. Ed. Chen, Hsuan-Chih and Ovid Tzeng, Amsterdam: Elsevier Sciences Publishers, 1992. 3-35.
(In this study they reported on several studies of character recognition among normal-brained adult native speakers.  All studies confirmed that when the segments of a character (either strokes, or 部件) were presented out of normal sequence, the subjects took longer to identify the character, or had difficulty identifying the character, or couldn’t identify the character.)

Research on CFL learners
Claudia Ross. “Visual Glueing: The relevance of stroke order for CFL learners.  Presentation at the Annual Meeting of CLTA, Philadelphia, November 2012.  

(This unpublished research indicates that CFL learners incorporate stroke order in their storage of characters in long-term memory.  The study will be repeated at other Chinese language programs in AY 2012-2013 and if the new findings corroborate the initial findings, we will prepare a paper to submit for publication.)

Character Load and Retention Rate

Jen, Theresa  and Ping Xu.  “Penless Chinese. “ Sino-Platonic Papers. Ed. Victor H. Mair. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania,  2000.  1-15.
(The study tested the character retention rate of students at an ivy league university who had studied 550 characters in their first year Chinese course.  They found that students retained 39% (214) of the characters that they had studied.  They did not report whether they were testing the production or recognition of characters. )

Yeh, Meng, Pei-Chia Chen, and Claudia Ross, “Character retention among CFL learners.” Presentation at the Annual Meeting of CLTA, Philadelphia, November 2012.