Semantic and Phonological Decoding in Children’s Orthographic Learning in Chinese

Li, Luan; Marinus, Eva; Castles, Anne; Hsieh, Miao Ling; Wang, Hua Chen

doi:10.1080/10888438.2020.1781863

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Unlike previous work (Li et al, 2018; 2020b; 2020c), no effect of phonetic regularity was detected in orthographic learning in the present study, probably due to the different operationalisations of the outcome tasks applied across studies. In previous studies (Li et al, 2018; 2020b; 2020c), their orthographic learning outcomes all tapped into the mapping of orthography and pronunciations. In contrast, our orthographic learning task measured meaning‐to‐orthography associations.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…In the current study, we found a facilitative effect of transparent semantic radicals in both orthographic and oral vocabulary learning, consistent with previous findings in orthographic learning (in tasks tapping into meaning‐to‐orthography associations, Li et al, 2020a) and in written vocabulary learning (in tasks measuring orthography‐to‐meaning associations, Li et al, 2020b). Consistently, previous work did not detect any effects of semantic radicals on tasks that did not involve meaning information, as indicated on the tasks assessing pure orthographic representations in Li et al (2020a), and associations between pronunciations and orthography in Li et al (2020b) and Li et al (2020c). Thus, the current findings add to previous literature that the facilitation of transparent semantic radicals might be more likely to be detected when an explicit demand for ascribing meaning is involved.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…The self‐teaching hypothesis is one of the most influential theories in explaining how orthographic learning happens (Share, 1995). Since Share's (1999) pioneer work in Hebrew, self‐teaching (i.e., the notion that children acquire new written words implicitly via phonological recoding such as reading the text aloud independently) has been evidenced as a robust way to develop orthographic knowledge across alphabetic writing systems including English (e.g., Kyte & Johnson, 2006), French (e.g., Bosse et al, 2015), Spanish (e.g., Suárez‐Coalla et al, 2016) and Dutch (e.g., de Jong et al, 2009), and in a non‐alphabetic writing system: Chinese (e.g., Li et al, 2020a; 2020b; 2020c; 2018). Moreover, recent research demonstrates that word properties such as phonetic regularity can also influence English‐speaking children's orthographic learning and thus need to be considered in self‐teaching research (e.g., Wang et al, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Self‐teaching in Chinese: the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic and vocabulary learning

Linqing

2021

Journal Research in Reading

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Background Previous work suggests that children can teach themselves new written words via reading aloud texts independently (i.e., orthographic learning via self‐teaching). In self‐teaching in Chinese, regular phonetic radicals and transparent semantic radicals facilitate orthographic learning. The present study examined the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in both orthographic learning and oral vocabulary learning via self‐teaching among Chinese children. Methods Thirty‐four Mandarin‐speaking second graders read aloud and comprehended 12 stories annotated with Pinyin, a phonetic script in Chinese. Each story included a semantic–phonetic compound pseudocharacter appearing five times. The phonetic radicals were classified as one‐third regular, one‐third semiregular and one‐third irregular. These phonetic radicals carried full, partial or no phonetic information, depending on their regularity. Moreover, half of the semantic radicals were either transparent or opaque, meaning that they were semantically related or unrelated to the meaning of the pseudocharacters, respectively. Learning outcomes included participants' oral vocabulary learning and orthographic learning regarding word recognition and spelling. Results In addition to the well‐studied orthographic learning, children can also achieve vocabulary learning via self‐teaching. Results indicate that transparent semantic radicals facilitated orthographic and vocabulary learning. Moreover, vocabulary learning was facilitated by regular phonetic radicals but hindered by semiregular phonetic radicals. Conclusions These findings, together, point to the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in Chinese children's orthographic and vocabulary learning. Findings advance our understanding of self‐teaching across writing systems and add to the educational value of self‐teaching.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

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confidence: 99%

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Self‐teaching in Chinese: the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic and vocabulary learning

Linqing

2021

Journal Research in Reading

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“…Our study was consistent with extensive previous studies (Ho & Bryant, 1997a ; Ho et al, 2003a ; Li et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Yin & McBride, 2015 ) in finding that the PRAs of second-grade students significantly contributed to CS whereas PAL had no additive effect on CS, supporting Hypothesis 1 . This suggests that Chinese children who develop literacy rapidly do not tend to build an arbitrary connection at the whole-character level (via the lexical route); instead, they primarily adopt PRA at the radical level (via the sublexical route) in a top-down manner.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Although Chinese is a nonalphabetic script without phonological recording processing, PRA could still contribute to the acquisition of unfamiliar Chinese characters. For example, Li et al, ( 2020 , 2021 ) tested the self-teaching hypothesis on Chinese second-grade students, with their results supporting the primary role of phonological recoding in character learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to read Chinese: the roles of phonological awareness, paired–associate learning, and phonetic radical awareness

Tseng

Chang

et al. 2022

Read Writ

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This study aimed to determine how Chinese children adapt to Chinese orthography–phonology correspondence by acquiring phonetic radical awareness (PRA). This study used two important Chinese encoding approaches (rote and orthographic approaches) as the developmental trajectory, in which the present study hypothesized that phonological awareness (PA) exerts not only a direct influence on PRA but also an indirect influence through paired– associate learning (PAL). We also explored whether the association between PA and PAL is affected by the complexity of visual stimuli embedded in PAL. This study recruited 70 s-grade students to participate in various tests, which assessed (a) PA (measured by onset and rhyme awareness), (b) PRA (measured by regularity and consistency of phonetic radicals), (c) PAL (measured by learning performance on strokes; pattern-object and strokes pattern-syllable mapping), and (d) Chinese character recognition ability. Path analyses indicated that (1) character size had a significant positive correlation with PRA but not with PAL, (2) PAL fully mediated the association between PA and PRA, and (3) compared with PAL with a low stroke count, PA had a stronger relationship with PAL with a high stroke count. The results of this study were consistent with previous studies and suggest that PRA is the most important literacy skill for children in the middle of their learning-to-read stage. The results also augment existing literature by revealing that PRA acquisition is increased by PAL supported by PA, rather than by PA alone. Moreover, when the visual complexity of PAL increases, the support of PA to PAL would increase to make up for the working memory shortage.

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Teaching Chinese Heritage Children in New Zealand to Read Chinese Characters in a Community School Through a Progressive Character Reading Method

Cheng

Everatt

Arrow

et al. 2023

Multilingual Education

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Semantic and Phonological Decoding in Children’s Orthographic Learning in Chinese

Cited by 9 publications

References 45 publications

Self‐teaching in Chinese: the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic and vocabulary learning

Self‐teaching in Chinese: the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic and vocabulary learning

Learning to read Chinese: the roles of phonological awareness, paired–associate learning, and phonetic radical awareness

Teaching Chinese Heritage Children in New Zealand to Read Chinese Characters in a Community School Through a Progressive Character Reading Method

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