Understanding the Role of Radicals in Chinese Character Acquisition for Non-Native Chinese Learners

Abstract

This work aims to understand the role of radicals in Chinese character acquisition for non-native Chinese learners. The meta-analysis in Chapter 2 reviewed 11 articles regarding radical-based instruction strategies and synthesized their results to investigate the effect of radical-based strategies on improving Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners’ radical awareness and character meaning production. The overall results demonstrated that radical-based instruction strategies had a significant large effect associated with character meaning production, but no significant effect was found associated with radical awareness. The CFL study in Chapter 3 proposed two instruction models under Delayed Character Introduction (DCI) and examined the mediation effects of radical awareness and pinyin and meaning production on character writing. The results demonstrated that a large indirect effect of radical awareness and pinyin and meaning production jointly mediated the relationship between the type of instruction model and character writing. It was found that pinyin and meaning production was a significant independent mediator for character writing while radical awareness was not, which was related to the outcomes in Chapter 2 meta-analysis. Chapter 4 was conduced with another important population Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) learners to understand the role of radical awareness in their character acquisition. Different from the results in the CFL study in Chapter 3, the CHL study in Chapter 4 revealed a significant mediation effect of radical awareness between the type of textbook and character writing. Moreover, the indirect effect mediated through the radical awareness post-task at the end of the semester was stronger than that mediated through the radical awareness pre-task at mid-term, suggesting that the mediation effect of radical awareness in character writing became more evident when the CHL learners digested the radical assistance strategy in character recognition.