Encoding Strategies Used by Native and Non-Native Readers of Chinese Mandarin

A critical review of research on strategies in learning Chinese as both a second and foreign language

“…When Shi (2005) referred to orthographic knowledgebased strategies, she indeed meant phonological, graphic, and semantic strategies as first indicated by Hayes (1988). Similarly, low-level and higher-level processing strategies in Lee's (1998) study were the same as those used in Shen's (2004) study, except that Lee focused on reading strategies in general and Shen was looking specifically at character memorization.…”

“…Different from alphabetic-based languages, a Chinese character consists of sound (phonetics), shape (graphics), and meaning, and lacks an obvious sound-script correspondence. Early strategy research either associated strategy descriptions with these three aspects (e.g., Hayes, 1988;Li, 1998;Liu & Jiang, 2003;Shen, 2005), or reported whatever behaviors were identified in studies, such as observable behaviors in Ke's (1998) study or invisible but articulated cognitive processes by participants in studies by Everson and Ke (1997) and by Shen (2004). At the same time, attention to Chinese reading also yielded descriptions of certain strategy types.…”

“…The CSL/CFL strategy research focusing on character learning suggests that lexical development is a major concern among researchers. Early studies tended to investigate CFL learners' strategies for character recognition (Hayes, 1988;Shen, 2004). More recent research presents a diverse profile including the investigation of: general strategies that students use for character learning (Chen, 2009;Ma, 2007;McGinnis, 1999;Shen, 2005;Yin, 2003), specific strategies for character learning (Kuo, 2000;Liu & Jiang, 2003;Shen, 2010), character learning strategies employed by students from characterbased vs. alphabetic-based languages (Arrow, 2004;Jiang & Zhao, 2001), the effects of CSL/CFL learners' strategy use in character learning (Ke, 1998;Kuo & Hooper, 2004;Shen, 2004;Zhao & Jiang, 2002), strategy instruction and character learning (Chen, 2011).…”

“…More recent research presents a diverse profile including the investigation of: general strategies that students use for character learning (Chen, 2009;Ma, 2007;McGinnis, 1999;Shen, 2005;Yin, 2003), specific strategies for character learning (Kuo, 2000;Liu & Jiang, 2003;Shen, 2010), character learning strategies employed by students from characterbased vs. alphabetic-based languages (Arrow, 2004;Jiang & Zhao, 2001), the effects of CSL/CFL learners' strategy use in character learning (Ke, 1998;Kuo & Hooper, 2004;Shen, 2004;Zhao & Jiang, 2002), strategy instruction and character learning (Chen, 2011). The often-quoted Hayes' (1988) study perhaps is the earliest one to investigate students' strategies in recognizing Chinese characters. Starting with the premise that the dominant processing strategies would be revealed by the types of errors that the learners made, Hayes (1988) designed two tasks to determine whether beginners would be able to correctly recognize the target character that was mixed with phonological, graphic, and semantic distracters.…”

“…First, relevant research has gone through three chronological stages: 1980-89 (phase 1), 1990-99 (phase 2), and the 21st century (phase 3). In phase 1, publications in Chinese were absent and there appeared to be only one journal article (Hayes, 1988) and two doctoral dissertations written in English (Everson, 1986;Yu, 1987). Hayes (1988) examined Chi-nese character learning strategies, Yu (1987) worked on mnemonic strategies used by English-speaking learners of Chinese, and Everson (1986) examined English-speaking learners' Chinese reading strategies.…”