Abstract
This study investigated Chinese children’s development of sensitivity to positional (orthographic), phonological, and semantic cues of radicals in encoding novel Chinese characters. A newly designed picture-novel character mapping task, along with nonverbal reasoning ability, vocabulary, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 198 kindergartners, 172 second graders and 165 fifth graders. Children’s strategies in using positional, phonological, and semantic cues of radicals varied across grades. The higher the children’s grade level, the more commonly children used semantic and positional cues of radicals. Regression analyses showed that the contribution of semantic radical awareness for explaining Chinese character reading increased as children’s grade increased, whereas the contribution of positional regularity awareness decreased. These findings suggest that learning Chinese characters involves a transition from a sound- and position-based approach to a meaning-based approach.
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Notes
Semantic-base and phonetic-base are mutually exclusively. If children choose to use a semantic radical, we can predict that they are not using the phonetic radical. Thus, we can use either the semantic-base or phonetic-base as dependent variables here, but not both.
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Acknowledgements
This study was presented at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and it was awarded by the Scientific Studies of Reading Society as L. Sandak Young Investigator Award. We thank the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. It was also supported in part by Collaborative Research Fund of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Research Grants Council (CUHK8/CRF/13G) to Catherine McBride. We are also very grateful to schools, parents, and children for their participation.
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Appendix
Appendix
Items in the picture-novel character mapping task and the radical properties of the characters
Items | Phonetic radical | Semantic radical | |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | 旗 /kei4/ | 其 /kei4/ | 方 |
2. | 飯 /faan6/ | 反 /faan2/ | 食 |
3. | 河 /ho4/ | 可 /ho2/ | 水 |
4. | 眼 /ngaan5/ | 艮 /gan3/, /ngan4/ | 目 |
5. | 盆 /pun4/ | 分 /fan1/ | 皿 |
6. | 錶 /biu1/ | 表 /biu2/ | 金 |
7. | 窗 /coeng1/ | 囱 /cung1/ | 穴 |
8. | 棋 /kei4/ | 其 /kei4/ | 木 |
9. | 帽 /mou6/ | 冒 /mou6/ | 巾 |
10. | 虎 /fu2/ | 几 /gei1/, /gei2/ | 虍 |
11. | 路 /lou6/ | 各 /gok3/ | 足 |
12. | 鴨 /aap3/ | 甲 /gaap3/ | 鳥 |
13. | 雲 /wan4/ | 云 /wan4/ | 雨 |
14. | 燈 /dang1/ | 登 /dang1/ | 火 |
15. | 船 /syun4/ |
| 舟 |
16. | 牀 /cong4/ | 木 /muk6/ | 爿 |
17. | 碗 /wun2/ | 宛 /wun2/ | 石 |
18. | 臉 /lim5/ | 僉 /cim1/ | 月 |
19. | 紙 /zi2/ | 氏 /si6/, /zi1/ | 糸 |
20. | 蝦 /haa4/ | 叚 Unpronounceable | 虫 |
21. | 墻 /coeng4/ | 嗇 /sik1/ | 土 |
22. | 嘴 /zeoi2/ | 觜 /zeoi2/,/zi1/ | 口 |
23. | 頭 /tau4/ | 豆 /dau6/ | 頁 |
24. | 家 /gaa1/ | 豕 /ci2/ | 宀 |
25. | 褲 /fu3/ | 庫 /fu3/ | 衣 |
26. | 箭 /zin3/ | 前 /cin4/ | 竹 |
27. | 糖 /tong4/ | 唐 /tong4/ | 米 |
28. | 豹 /paau3/ | 勺 /zoek3/ | 豸 |
29. | 琴 /kam4/ | 今 /gam1/ | 玉 |
30. | 鞋 /haai4/ | 圭 /gwai1/ | 革 |
31. | 毯 /taan2/ | 炎 /jim4/ | 毛 |
32. | 球 /kau4/ | 求 /kau4/ | 玉 |
33. | 麵 /min6/ | 面 /min6/ | 麥 |
34. | 歌 /go1/ | 哥 /go1/ | 欠 |
35. | 缸 /gong1/ | 工 /gung1/ | 缶 |
36. | 鯨 /king4/ | 京 /ging1/ | 魚 |
Unpronounceable
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Tong, X., Tong, X. & McBride, C. Radical sensitivity is the key to understanding Chinese character acquisition in children. Read Writ 30, 1251–1265 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9722-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9722-8