Abstract
The purpose of this article aims to analyze the effect of word-word space in written Chinese to advanced non-native speakers when they read and process Mandarin texts. The participants have performed one online reaction time experiment and another one offline pencil-paper test. The results indicate that the structure of word segmentation in written Chinese texts have play an effective role in sentences’ semantic processing, and the length and difficulty of sentences stimuli have also displayed significant function for their Chinese sentences processing. However, the results of offline test show that the combinational amount of segmental words have not affected the texts materials processed by advanced L2 participants. These results suggest that word boundary can facilitate L2 learners of Mandarin Chinese in processing text during their reading. Apart from theoretical implications, this article also proposes a new pedagogical approach to teaching text segmentation in Chinese, which can be useful in instructing Chinese as a second or foreign language.
Highlights
Reading is one of the most crucial skills in foreign language learning
A 2 × 2 × 2 within-subjects ANOVA was conducted with sentence reading reaction time as the dependent variable and word boundary, sentence length and sentence difficulty as the independent variables
The two experiments of the present study have shown that word-word space can help advanced non-native learners of Mandarin Chinese fast process Chinese texts and correctly segment ambiguous Chinese strings
Summary
Reading is one of the most crucial skills in foreign language learning. The written texts in many languages use word-word space to indicate of the boundary of continuous words (e.g., English, German etc.). Native Chinese speakers with normal mentality usually do not experience difficulty reading Chinese texts (e.g., Bai et al, 2008; Chen, 2021; Liang & Bai, 2010; Shen et al, 2001, 2010). This does not mean that word boundary or segmentation is not important in native Chinese reading. If native and L2 speakers of Chinese know the location of the word boundary, they will recognize and process word fast and accurately. Word boundary helps deconstruct the direct constituents of a sentence, which permits the correct and clear understanding of each word
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