A cognition perspective revisit on teaching of pictophonetic characters: A case study on the new HSK level 3 common verbs

Abstract

This article discusses the teaching of Chinese characters’ pictophonetic characters from a cognitive perspective. First of all, it clearly explains the characteristics of pictophonetic characters, meaning components are used as expressing categories, and sound components express sound and meaning at the same time. It also discusses the combination of pictophonetic characters in the square character space. Secondly, it introduces the main literacy methods of Chinese character teaching at present, and uses the image teaching method and the assortment method among them. Then, on the basis of the previous knowledge, the “conceptual integration theory” (conceptual integration) is used to integrate the sound and meaning of pictophonetic characters with the shape of the characters. After that, it compares the common core pictophonetic verbs in the new Chinese Proficiency Test Syllabus (Level 3) (also known as the Chinese Proficiency Test) with the Contemporary Corpus (COCT, National Institute of Education, Taiwan), and selects the overlapping items. Among them, 22 Chinese characters conform to the core verb vocabulary of the new HSK (Level 3). There are 13 core verb pictophonetic characters suitable for “positive cognition” teaching. This article first introduces five examples of the strongest phonetic association: standing zhàn (standing), staying zhù (live), singing gē (song), singing chàng (singing) and discussing/discussing yì (discussion). Lastly it deliberates conceptual integration theory, analyzing its rationale, reconstructing and demonstrating its diversified literacy teaching methods.