Knowledge Of Chinese Characters Research Articles

Implementing dynamic assessment in writing in Chinese as a second language: Towards an adjusted cumulative group dynamic assessment

Drawing on Vygotskian sociocultural theory and adopting a microgenetic analysis method, this study examined the effectiveness of group dynamic assessment (G-DA) on Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners' writing, intending to propose an adjusted cumulative G-DA. A five-week study was conducted in two parallel writing classrooms, where G-DA was used in the experimental class to assess and mediate the learners' writing. The study found that the G-DA and non-G-DA students' writing performance did not show a significant difference in the static assessments; however, the effectiveness of the G-DA was examined through the reduction in the amount of mediation and the changes in the mediation types in the G-DA group, which demonstrated that the G-DA of CSL writing had a positive effect on the learners' internalization of linguistic knowledge. This paper reports the microgenetic analysis focusing on two G-DA students to provide an in-depth account of the G-DA. Learners' internalization was more salient regarding their grammatical knowledge than vocabulary and Chinese character knowledge. Meanwhile, mediated feedback was more conducive to developing writing in the lower-proficiency CSL learner. To illustrate the potential affordances that G-DA can offer to CSL writing classrooms, this study also proposes and discusses an adjusted cumulative G-DA in the context of CSL writing.

Tracking children’s handwriting learning process using EEG: A system development and validation

BackgroundHandwriting is a fundamental component of school education, especially in the early phases. It is thus important to develop a scientific approach to refining the cost-efficiency of handwriting learning in young children. AimsIn this study, we proposed that an integration of behavioral and neural data tracking during the real-time process of handwriting learning can reveal the learning process and thus inform the design of handwriting training. The main rationale is that the two complementary information channels can reveal the dynamic learning curve during repetitive practices. SampleParticipants were 50 typically developing schoolchildren (aged 6–7) who had limited orthographical knowledge of Chinese characters and handwriting training. MethodsSynchronized EEG and handwriting kinematics data were collected when participants were performing a Chinese character copying task. Six unfamiliar Chinese characters at three different complexity levels were selected, and the participants copied each character repetitively for 15 times. The representative behavioral and neural features related to handwriting fluency were quantified, including writing duration, velocity, and event-related potentials (ERPs) extracted from the copying process of each character. By applying linear mixed models (LMMs), we found significant behavioral improvement and neural adaptation effect across the repetitive copying practices; and the observed behavioral and neural effects showed a systematic pattern of dependence on character complexity. ConclusionsThese findings validated the cognitive association of the non-invasively collected neural signals, demonstrated the feasibility of combing behavioral and neural signals to track the process of children's handwriting learning, and informed the design of handwriting training programs.

Beyond quantity of experience: Exploring the role of semantic consistency in Chinese character knowledge.

Most printed Chinese words are compounds built from the combination of meaningful characters. Yet, there is a poor understanding of how individual characters contribute to the recognition of compounds. Using a megastudy of Chinese word recognition (Tse et al., 2017), we examined how the lexical decision of existing and novel Chinese compounds was influenced by two properties of individual characters: family size (the number of distinct words that embed a character) and family semantic consistency (the average semantic relatedness between a character and all words containing it). Results revealed that both variables influence word and nonword processing: Words are recognized more quickly and accurately when they contain characters that occur frequently across different words and that make consistent meaningful contributions to those words, while nonwords containing those types of characters are rejected more slowly. These findings suggest that the learning of individual characters is based not only on the quantity of experience with them but also on the reliability of the semantic information they communicate. In addition, readers are able to generalize character knowledge acquired from previous word experiences to their daily encounters with familiar and unfamiliar words. We close by discussing how word experience shapes character knowledge when different ways of calculating family properties are considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters in preschoolers: Evidence from a longitudinal study

Recent studies have shown that young children’s orientation sensitivity is correlated with their reading ability. However, the development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters with different complexities (e.g., simple characters and compound characters) in preschool children is unknown. To fill this gap, the current three-year longitudinal study aimed to investigate the development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese simple characters and compound characters. A total of 50 Chinese children were first tested at their first kindergarten years (T1: mean age = 3.62 years) and then tested annually on a variety of tasks for three years (T2: mean age = 4.63 years; T3: mean age = 5.58 years). Children’s orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters was assessed using two perceptual-matching tasks. The results showed that the inverted and mirrored orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters demonstrated different developmental trajectories. Specifically, children possessed inverted and mirrored orientation knowledge of Chinese simple characters at the age of 4. They also displayed sensitivity to inverted Chinese compound characters at the age of 5. However, mirrored orientation knowledge of Chinese compound characters did not emerge until the age of 5. These results suggest that children’s inverted orientation knowledge of Chinese characters developed earlier. Moreover, the complexity of Chinese characters affected the development of orientation knowledge of Chinese characters.

How do the component skills affect Chinese FL reading comprehension? A study based on ridge regression analysis

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the effect of reading components (including Chinese character knowledge, morphological knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, grammar knowledge, and lexical inference) on the reading comprehension of 44 Malaysian child learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Measures of Chinese character knowledge, morphological knowledge, receptive vocabulary, vocabulary synonym, lexical inference, word order, grammatical judgment, and reading comprehension were used. Drawing upon ridge regression, the study found that grammar knowledge (measured by word order and grammatical judgment) had the largest effect on reading comprehension, followed by morphological knowledge and vocabulary knowledge (measured by receptive vocabulary and vocabulary synonym). Lexical inference and Chinese character knowledge had the least effects on reading comprehension. The findings of the study are discussed with pedagogical implications and future research suggestions.

읽기 텍스트에서 한자병기를 활용한 한국어 어휘 교육 방안

In this study, Chinese learners proposed Writing with Chinese characters adjacently as a way to increase the efficiency of learning Korean vocabulary and reading comprehension. To prove this justification, 30 Chinese international students currently studying at Korean universities were randomly selected and surveyed. In addition, the effectiveness of Writing with Chinese characters adjacently on reading education and vocabulary acquisition was examined by writing Chinese characters together in the "Chinese character vocabulary" melted in the learning textbook.
 Accordingly, based on their background knowledge of Chinese characters, Chinese learners concluded that they not only easily understand the meaning of the text but also are effective in acquiring vocabulary. It should also not be overlooked that this can be an important motivation for learners in Chinese character cultures to learn Korean rather than learners in other cultures.
 Based on the conclusions drawn here, it is possible to find new teachinglearning methods that can efficiently acquire Korean vocabulary and improve reading skills. In order for this Chinese character method to establish itself as a Korean language teaching method for Korean learners in the Chinese character culture, it must be actively applied to various textbooks such as Korean reading textbooks, Korean vocabulary learning textbooks, and major textbooks. And it is necessary to be sure that Writing with Chinese characters adjacently can be the best means of helping understand Korean language.

The development of Chinese character reading and knowledge in young children

Early reading and literacy are critical for helping children to become good readers, and character reading and knowledge are important aspects. However, few studies have investigated this issue. By drawing on 127 children between 4 and 6 years of age from five Level 1 kindergartens in Shanghai, this study examined the development of Chinese character reading and knowledge in young children. Character reading was assessed using the revised Chinese Communicative Development Inventory. Children’s knowledge of Chinese characters was administered through three tasks, namely stroke-pattern recognition, visual memorization and component detection, and component positioning. Results indicated that children acquired some characters before formally learning to read and write. Both character reading and knowledge developed rapidly with age. Further, children’s knowledge of Chinese characters was closely associated with their character reading. Findings suggest that children’s interest and knowledge of characters should be fostered during the early years to prepare them to be successful readers.

Revisiting a Long-Lasting Legacy

This review of literature will address the influences of knowledge of Chinese characters on the reading development of English. This question stems from an increasing number of children of Chinese heritage enrolling in school in the U.S. who wish to gain biliteracy in English and Chinese. On the one hand, bilingualism is acknowledged to be beneficial to young readers’ language and cognitive development. However, on the other hand, the logographic nature of Mandarin Chinese makes it difficult for many educators in the country who only know alphabetic languages like English and Spanish to understand how Chinese-English bilingual readers reconcile two different systems and envision what support they may need.
 This review will primarily focus on the basics of Mandarin Chinese and developmental models of the two languages to examine how proficiency in Chinese can transfer to and facilitate the reading development of English. Departing from the comparison and contrast between linguistic features and developmental models of the two languages, this review will investigate contributions of Chinee characters to English word reading at the levels of cognition, morphology, and phonology. While Chinese characters as logograms demand predominantly morphological knowledge than phonological awareness from readers, it is phonological awareness that contributes most to reading English words among beginning readers in kindergarten and first grade.

CHINESE CHARACTERS IN MODERN KOREA

Being a part of the Chinese cultural area, the Korean Peninsula adopted Chinese characters and literary language in the first centuries C.E. Nevertheless, its colloquial language remained native Korean, genealogically and typologically different from Chinese, and in the first half of the 15th century the Korean alphabet was created. From the end of the 19th century, Korean was proclaimed the official written language, although the mixed script was mainly used (Sinokorean words were written in Chinese characters, and native words and grammatical formants in Korean alphabet).After liberation from the Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), both the North and the South proclaimed abolition of writing in Chinese characters. But unlike the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the Republic of Korea the transition dragged on for more than half a century. And though at schools of both Korean states Chinese characters are still being taught, young generation has a rather low level of their knowledge.Upon thorough analysis of current South Korean newspapers and other materials, the author has made the conclusion that nowadays the usage of Chinese characters even in the South is extremely limited and is in fact occasional and depends on: 1) the topic of the text (it is present more widely in historical and classical literature); 2) the need to distinguish homonyms and difficult words with an unclear meaning; 3) writer’s preferences. Using Chinese characters is a personal choice, and one can choose to replace them with more wordy expressions instead.At the same time the article concludes that it is necessary to teach Chinese characters in certain quantities to students, including those majoring in Korean studies at non-linguistics universities including MGIMO. This recommendation takes into consideration, first, the existence of a huge layer of Sinokorean words (social and political vocabulary, terminology), which requires elementary knowledge of Chinese characters for better understanding; second, the task of reading current South Korean newspapers with some Chinese characters used, not to mention older publications written in mixed script.

Zero-shot Handwritten Chinese Character Recognition with hierarchical decomposition embedding

Handwritten Chinese Character Recognition (HCCR) is a challenging topic in the field of pattern recognition due to large-scale character vocabulary, complex hierarchical structure, various writing styles, and scarce training samples. In this paper, we explored the hierarchical knowledge of Chinese characters and presented a novel zero-shot HCCR method. First, we handled the relations between the characters and their primitives, such as radicals and structures, to obtain a tree layout of primitives. Then, we presented a novel zero-shot hierarchical decomposition embedding method to encode the tree layout into a semantic vector. Next, we devised a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based framework to learn both radicals and structures of characters via the semantic vector. As different Chinese characters share some common radicals and structures, our method is able to recognize new categories without any labeled samples from them. Moreover, our method is effective in both traditional HCCR and zero-shot HCCR tasks. It achieves competitive performance on the traditional experiment setting and significantly surpasses the state-of-the-art methods on the zero-shot experiment setting.

An Augmented Paper Game With Socio-Cognitive Support

This paper presents an augmented reality-based Chinese character composition game (ARC) that employs augmented papers to engage lower primary school students in collaborative Chinese character learning. A design research approach was used to gain a holistic view of designing, enacting, and evaluating the ARC. The participants included four teachers and five classes of students from two primary schools. The school-based research findings suggested that: 1) the ARC was an effective system for improving beginning learners’ orthographic knowledge of Chinese characters, particularly for those students with low Chinese language proficiency; 2) the tangible paper interface engaged students in group work and increased the game playfulness; and 3) students’ language proficiency had a significant effect on their perceptions of ease of use and usefulness of the augmented paper game. This paper not only substantiated the potential of the augmented paper as a carrier of educational content, but also instantiated how to implement it to promote social and cognitive supports for interaction and collaboration.

非目的语环境下越南汉语学习者形声 字形旁意识发展考察

This article takes a sample of Vietnamese Chinese learners in the non-target language environment, uses the test method to investigate the development process of Vietnamese Chinese learners’ awareness of meaning radicals in pictophonetic characters. The results: Vietnamese Chinese learners still have not developed a more automatic awareness of meaning radicals at the primary and intermediate levels, developed a more automatic awareness of meaning radicals in the advanced stage; systematically teaching the theoretical knowledge of Chinese characters will help learners to form and develop the awareness of meaning radicals in pictophonetic characters of Chinese characters. Compare with the study of international students in China, this article also found: in different language learning environments, the development of learners' awareness of meaning radicals is different. Key words : Vietnamese Chinese learners, Pictophonetic characters, The awareness of meaning radicals, Chinese characters teaching 本文以非目的语环境下的越南汉语学习者为样本, 采用纸笔测试方式进行考察越南汉语学习者形旁意识的发展过程｡ 结果发现：越南汉语学习者在初级和中级阶段时仍然没有发展出比较自动的形旁意识；到高级阶段, 越南汉语学习者才发展出比较自动的形旁意识；系统地教授汉字的理论知识将有助于学习者汉字形声字形旁意识的形成和发展｡ 与对在华留学生的研究进行比较, 本文还发现：在不同的语言学习环境, 学习者形声字形旁意识的发展情况是不同的｡ 關鍵字 : 越南学生, 形声字, 形旁意识, 汉字教学

SCFont: Structure-Guided Chinese Font Generation via Deep Stacked Networks

Automatic generation of Chinese fonts that consist of large numbers of glyphs with complicated structures is now still a challenging and ongoing problem in areas of AI and Computer Graphics (CG). Traditional CG-based methods typically rely heavily on manual interventions, while recentlypopularized deep learning-based end-to-end approaches often obtain synthesis results with incorrect structures and/or serious artifacts. To address those problems, this paper proposes a structure-guided Chinese font generation system, SCFont, by using deep stacked networks. The key idea is to integrate the domain knowledge of Chinese characters with deep generative networks to ensure that high-quality glyphs with correct structures can be synthesized. More specifically, we first apply a CNN model to learn how to transfer the writing trajectories with separated strokes in the reference font style into those in the target style. Then, we train another CNN model learning how to recover shape details on the contour for synthesized writing trajectories. Experimental results validate the superiority of the proposed SCFont compared to the state of the art in both visual and quantitative assessments.

Preschoolers’ knowledge of Chinese characters: From radical awareness to character recognition

This study investigated preschoolers’ knowledge of Chinese characters by testing character structures on four levels: radical (character components), whole characters, characters in words and characters in sentences. A total of 107 preschool children between the ages of three and six from four nursery schools in Taiwan participated in the study. Two tasks, namely, Basic Chinese character concepts and a Radical differentiating task, were conducted. The results indicated the following: (a) children younger than four years with no reading ability expressed an awareness of character structure. (b) In general, preschoolers’ character knowledge increased with age; however, there were individual variations among the same age group. (c) Regression analyses revealed that understanding character and radical forms could effectively predict concurrent character reading for children aged between three and six. Our results have some practical implications for literacy instruction to preschool Chinese children and early detection of children at risk of reading difficulties.

The effectiveness of guided inductive instruction and deductive instruction on semantic radical development in Chinese character processing

This study compared the effectiveness of deductive instruction and guided inductive instruction for developing semantic radical knowledge of Chinese characters. The evaluation was conducted through a quasi-experimental 3-week intervention involving 46 intermediate learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The results indicated that guided inductive instruction generated significantly greater gains in learners’ use of radical information for radical form-meaning mapping and for Chinese character recognition and inferencing. This study further found that the effectiveness of inductive instruction in strengthening radical form-meaning mapping varied for semantic radicals of different complexity levels. These findings suggest that instructors should apply guided induction in teaching semantic radicals, but also be flexible in varying instruction in response to the complexity of semantic radicals. The findings suggest that the inductive-deductive nature of instruction and the complexity of semantic radicals are important variables to consider in future research on the learning and instruction of Chinese characters.

The influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation in spoken word production.

Three sets of experiments using the picture naming tasks with the form preparation paradigm investigated the influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation unit in spoken word production in native Mandarin-speaking children. Participants included kindergarten children who have not received formal literacy instruction, Grade 1 children who are comparatively more exposed to the alphabetic pinyin system and have very limited Chinese character knowledge, Grades 2 and 4 children who have better character knowledge and more exposure to characters, and skilled adult readers who have the most advanced character knowledge and most exposure to characters. Only Grade 1 children showed the form preparation effect in the same initial consonant condition (i.e., when a list of target words shared the initial consonant). Both Grade 4 children and adults showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable (but not tone) among target words was shared. Kindergartners and Grade 2 children only showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable including tonal information was shared. These developmental changes in phonological preparation could be interpreted as a joint function of the modification of phonological representation and attentional shift. Extensive pinyin experience encourages speakers to attend to and select onset phoneme in phonological preparation, whereas extensive character experience encourages speakers to prepare spoken words in syllables.

The effects of graphic similarity on Japanese recognition of simplified Chinese characters

The pedagogical and theoretical questions addressed in this study relate to the extent to which native Japanese readers with little or no knowledge of Chinese characters recognize Chinese characters that are viewed as abbreviations of the kanji they already know. Three graphic similarity functions (i.e., an orthographically acceptable similarity, a physical similarity, and an extended physical similarity function) were formulated to predict the Japanese learners’ target kanji production. Results showed that the learners’ performance was poor, with only approximately 30% correct, and that the extended physical similarity function incorporating character frequency and graphic neighbors more accurately accounted for the target production than other functions. Some pedagogical implications and issues for further research are briefly discussed.

Three approaches to beginning Chinese instruction and their effects on oral development and character recognition

Developing Chinese character knowledge is often labor intensive and time consuming. Therefore, there is often an imbalance between character instruction and training in other language skills due to how much instructional time is occupied by learning characters. A few teaching approaches are frequently used in the classroom to accommodate this problem. This pilot study intended to compare these approaches in an experimental setting to investigate the effectiveness of them on learners’ oral and character recognition performances. This study involved nine first-year learners of Chinese at a university in the United States. Data collection of this study included the results of character quizzes and oral assessment. The participants and their teachers were also given a survey regarding their perceptions towards each of the instructional approaches. The findings illustrated that some of the instructional approaches helped develop the participants’ oral skills more rapidly than the rest, while some approaches were more effective in aiding the development of character recognition.

¿Ideogramas o pictogramas? Una introducción a los caracteres chinos

The characters, a problematic issue on the learning of the Chinese language, are the most basic components of the language. However, many Spanish speaking students get discouraged in front of its learning, because of the difficulty that it carries and they cannot deny its existence. This work is dedicated to providing some basic knowledge of Chinese characters, taking the importance and curiosity into account, together with the Chinese civilization, to present a general idea of what kind of structures and applications the characters have, as well as to build a connecting bridge between the Hispanic culture and the Chinese culture.

일본고전문학에 나타난 당대 전기소설『유선굴(遊仙窟)』의 수용과 재창조성－헤이안(平安)시대 모노가타리(物語)를 중심으로－

This article analyzes the co-relationship between Yuseongul, a Tang-dynasty romantic(Jeongi) novel and Monogatri in the Heian age, particularly regarding the acceptance and recreation of the former in the ancient Japanese literature. Yuseongul, which is regarded as the first foreign literatured imported into Japan, is a representative Jeon-gi romance about a love with a celestial maiden in the Tang dynasty and played the most important role in the birth of an ancient Japanese novel, Monogatari. After importing the culture of Tang dynasty, a great number of male authors in the nobility was fascinated by the imaginary world of Taoist hermits and their love with a fairy nymph. In this respect, Yuseongul, which tells the story of love and separation between lovers, was accepted as a great specimen and also provided a representative form for the romance the Heian noble men yearned to create. The aesthetics that is idealized in the romance of Taoist hermits is spiritual refinement in an isolated place far from our everyday world. This literary form was a way that the contemporary noble men with the great knowledge of Chinese characters and literature express themselves. Furthermore, the popularity of refined literary tastes in the Heian age reveals their wishful fantasy to live on the ideas of Taoism, that is, the life of a hermitic doyen.