Using Eye-Tracking Technology to Explore the Impact of Instructional Multimedia on CFL Learners’ Chinese Character Recognition

Abstract

This study investigated differences in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) students’ learning achievement, cognitive load level, and eye-movement patterns when learning three types of Chinese characters: pictographs, compound ideographs, and phono-semantic compounds with multimedia slides. Thirty CFL students participated in this study. Additional eye-tracking data, such as participants’ total fixation duration, mean fixation duration, and fixation count while viewing instructional slides, were recorded. The results showed that CFL learners learned pictograph characters with less cognitive load, compared with that involved in learning compound ideograph and phono-semantic compound characters. Participants were found to fixate more on the character area when inspecting the pictograph than on the other two categories of characters. Meanwhile, fewer fixations were placed on the enlarged character area when text passages served as the major resource for understanding compound ideograph and phono-semantic compound characters. The illustrative nature of pictograph characters seemed to make this character form more explicit than the other categories of Chinese characters. However, using only text information to understand abstract meanings of compound ideographs and phono-semantic compounds may place an additional cognitive demand on CFL learners, resulting in learners spending less time inspecting the character shape. Replacing the text description with videos or animation may provide scenarios in which ambiguity in the meaning of compound ideographs and phono-semantic compounds can be removed, to promote better understanding of these characters for CFL learners. Future studies are recommended to determine if the use of voice-over and videos/animation explanations improve the ability to learn Chinese characters.