1. Research on Chinese
Character Literacy for CFL
Learners
Claudia Ross
College of the Holy Cross
cross@holycross.edu

2. Speak First, Read Second
L1 Learners:
 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.
 Findings: 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 the ability of L1 leaerners to identify the
characters used to write the words.

3. L2 Learners: advice
 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.
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.

4. Stroke Order Knowledge
Enhances Character Recognition
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.
This study reports 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 in normal sequence, native
readers easily identified the characters, but when 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.

5. L2 Learners:
Claudia Ross. “Visual Glueing: The relevance of
stroke order for CFL learners. Presentation at
the Annual Meeting of
CLTA, Philadelphia, November 2012.

6. Click for character 1

8. Click for character 2

10. Students tested: Students in their 3rd and 7th semesters of
Chinese at the College of the Holy Cross. Students in their 7th
semester had all just returned from a semester or a year of
study in China. Students in the 3rd semester had not studied
abroad.
Both groups tested on strokes shown in conventional order
Both groups were able to identify characters.
7th semester students tested on strokes shown out of order.
They could not identify any of the characters.
Conclusion: CFL learners appear to incorporate stroke order in
their storage of characters in long-term memory. Either they
have internalized stroke order rules, or stroke order generally
follows an innate organizing principle (left to right, top to
bottom) that is not specific to Chinese.

11. Implications
1. Attention to stroke order appears to
enhance recognition.
2. CFL learners should be directed to focus on
stroke order when learning characters.
3. Stroke order is one of a number of features
of characters that learners should pay
attention to in order to most efficiently
learn characters.

12. First Strokes –Highest
Information Load
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 found 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.)

13. Awareness of Component Parts
Enhances Character Recognition
L1 Learners
 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.
The most successful L1 readers rely upon
radicals, phonetics, and repeating components to retain and
retrieve characters)

14.  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.

15. L2 Learners
 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.
Ke 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.

16. L2 Learners
 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.

17. Elaboration vs. Rote
Memorization
L1 Research
 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.
Shen found that instructor guided ‘elaboration’ incorporated
in character instruction, including focus on radicals and
phonetics, greatly enhances character retention when
compared with rote memorization without input from
instructor on memorization techniques.

18. Character Load and Retention
Studies on L2 learners (CFL learners)
 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.

19.  Meng, Yeh, Pei-Chia Chen, and Claudia Ross, “Character
retention among CFL learners.” Presentation at the Annual
Meeting of CLTA, Philadelphia, November 2012.
This study found that as the number of characters introduced
in a first year college-level Chinese program increases, the
percentage of characters that students can identify and
produce declines.
Students tested: College students at end of 2nd semester of a
beginning level Chinese class at 3 different US colleges.
84 students used Integrated Chinese and had learned 448
characters at time of testing. (“write-all” approach)
47 students used Routledge Course in Modern Mandarin and
had learned 161 characters at time of testing. (“selective”
approach)

20. Recognition
Write all approach
“Learned” 448 characters
Recognized 76.5% (tone errors ignored); 67.3%
(including tone)
Selective approach
“Learned” 161 characters
Recognized 94.2% (tone errors ignored); 83.9%
(including tone)

21. Production
Write all approach
“Learned” 448 characters
Produced (wrote) correctly: 45.9%
Selective approach
“Learned” 161 characters
Produced (wrote) correctly: 83.8%

22. Pinyin – help or hindrance?
 It depends
 Help: Conveys and reinforces pronunciation.
 Hindrance:
When paired with characters, distracts CFL
students* from characters. Gaze directly to pinyin
and remains there.
*whose L1 is English and is written with an alphabet
Meng Yeh eyetracking study, (presented at CLTA in 2011)