Implicit use of radicals in learning characters for nonnative learners of Chinese

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether beginning nonnative learners of Chinese can use phonological and semantic information of radicals to learn the sounds and meanings of new Chinese characters. Thirty-four seventh- and eighth-grade American adolescents, who received intensive Chinese instruction for one semester, were taught 16 compound pseudocharacters paired with novel pictures over three learning trials. After each learning trial, students were asked to produce the sounds and meanings of pseudocharacters in which semantic transparency and phonetic regularity of radicals were manipulated. Results showed a facilitation effect of transparent semantic radicals in learning character meanings in early trials. There was a trend that students learned to read regular and transparent characters better than irregular and opaque characters. The ability to learn orthography–pronunciation association uniquely predicted Chinese word reading after controlling for semantic and phonetic radical knowledge. These findings suggest a predominant use of semantic strategies and the importance of orthography to phonology mappings in learning to read Chinese for beginning nonnative learners of Chinese.

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