How do Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners acquire orthographic knowledge: component, structure and position regularity

Abstract

Learning Chinese characters could be challenging for many CSL learners due to the distinction in orthographic features between the Chinese written system and their first languages. While acquisition of orthographic knowledge could be important for learning Chinese characters, how they can gain knowledge about different aspects of Chinese orthography (i.e. component, structure and position regularity) remains less studied. The component is a basic perceptual constituent of Chinese characters, the character structure is the configuration layout formed by relative positions of components. Many components are supposed to follow the implicit position regularity rule when they are integrated to form characters. In this study, a total of 213 CSL students in Hong Kong were invited to complete three tasks measuring students’ component knowledge, structural knowledge, and position regularity knowledge. It has been found that overall CSL students’ performance in these tasks seemed to be affected by character structures. Furthermore, we found that component knowledge had an indirect effect on position regularity knowledge via the mediation of structural knowledge, which showed a possible link about how learners gradually understand complex orthographic rules based on the perceptual observation. Implications for the teaching and learning of the Chinese language were also discussed.

Keywords:

• Component knowledge
• position regularity knowledge
• structural knowledge
• indirect effect
• Chinese as a second language

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the General Research Fund, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Reference no.: HKU17605215/15 & HKIEd 17614519) for their project sponsorship, as well as the schools and teachers who participated in this study. They had received valuable comments from the journal’s editor Professor Masatoshi Sato, and the anonymous reviewers, for which they are very grateful too.Their appreciation also extends to Ms. Cai Mingjia and Mr. Zhengliang Sun for their assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh is an Assistant Professor, Assistant Dean (Knowledge Exchange) and Programme Director of Double Degree Programmes at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and an Honorary Professor at the Radboud Centre of Social Sciences of the Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her research interests include innovative pedagogies, learning motivation and IT-assisted language learning. She has led several large-scale research projects and being granted for over HK$100 million. She has over 70 publications on curriculum development and effectiveness studies of innovative pedagogies. She established a social enterprise in 2017 to transform and apply her research findings – mLang e-Learning Platform and pedagogy, to advance and promote technology assists language teaching and learning.

Dr Xian Liao is Assistant Professor at Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests are about cognitive processes in Chinese reading and writing, multiple texts comprehension and effective language teaching Chinese as both L1 and L2. His recent studies focus on the relationship between executive functions and Chinese language skills.

Prof Shing On Leung is Associate Professor in Faculty of Education, University of Macau. His teaching and research areas are in educational measurement and applications of statistics in education and social sciences. His recent works are on simple uses of BIC in model selection, Likert scales and analysis of large international educational databases.

Loretta Chung Wing Tamis Research Manager at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language, Teacher Professional Development, Intercultural Pedagogy, Corpus Linguistics, Social and Emotional Development, and Creativity.