Effectiveness of on-screen pinyin in learning Chinese: An expertise reversal for multimedia redundancy effect

Abstract

The reported study is aimed at developing effective techniques for reducing learner cognitive overload while using pinyin (a phonetic system) to learn the Chinese language. According to the multimedia redundancy effect, commonly used concurrent visual presentations of characters and pinyin, as well as their auditory pronunciations might impose an unnecessary extraneous load on learners and thus eliminate any potential benefits of using pinyin. In this study, learning effects of three computer-based presentation techniques (full on-screen pinyin transcription, partial on-screen pinyin transcription, and no on-screen pinyin) were compared for learners with higher and lower levels of prior language proficiency and pinyin knowledge. Results demonstrated the superiority of the partial pinyin condition over the two other conditions for more experienced learners. No differences between the three experimental groups were found for learners with lower levels of prior knowledge. The effectiveness of different pinyin presentation techniques depended on levels of learner prior knowledge (an expertise reversal effect).