Chinese Reading Research Articles

Robert Burns's Poetry During Critical Years in China

Robert Burns never came to China, never read about China, nor wrote about China. But he is known almost by every cultured person in China. It is the Chinese writers and translators who introduced him to China. His poems played different significant roles in different periods during critical years. His love poems helped him enter China; his patriotic poems encouraged Chinese youth to fight for the country's freedom and independence; his folk-song style set example for young Chinese poets to follow; his love for people won the heart of Chinese readers.

The Reception of Wuthering Heights in China: English-Chinese Translation, Dissemination, and Adaptation

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been translated, disseminated, and adapted for various Chinese audiences. This study employed historical and archival research methods to probe this phenomenon. We retrieved data from Wuthering Heights and its Chinese-translated versions, children’s literature works, monographs, academic papers from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and comments from the Douban Movie website. First, the researchers investigated Wuthering Heights’ translation in China from monographs and academic papers to explore the features of representative Chinese-translated versions. Second, the researchers explored Wuthering Heights’ dissemination in foreign literature education and literary study in China by analyzing the literature textbooks and academic papers. Third, the researchers examined the features of children’s literature works adapted from Wuthering Heights and the comments viewers made on the films adapted from the novel. The researchers found that the past nine decades witnessed the successful reception of Wuthering Heights in China for four reasons. First, the policies in the literary field contributed to its translation. Second, the reviews of the work in British literature textbooks and academic studies promoted the original text’s dissemination. Third, disseminating the movie adaptations enables more Chinese readers to know the classic, contributing to the original text’s dissemination. Fourth, the transmission of the children’s extracurricular bilingual reading material adapted from it gave Chinese teenagers a chance to know the novel’s plot and enhanced their reading ability, promoting the dissemination of Wuthering Heights in China.

Food word processing in Chinese reading: A study of restrained eaters.

Food-related attentional bias refers that individuals typically prioritize rewarding food-related cues (e.g. food words and food images) compared with non-food stimuli; however, the findings are inconsistent for restrained eaters. Traditional paradigms used to test food-related attentional bias, such as visual probe tasks and visual search tasks, may not directly and accurately enough to reflect individuals' food-word processing at different cognitive stages. In this study, we introduced the boundary paradigm to investigate food-word attentional bias for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. Eye movements were recorded when they performed a naturalistic sentence-reading task. The results of later-stage analyses showed that food words were fixated on for less time than non-food words, which indicated a superiority of foveal food-word processing for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. The results of early-stage analyses showed that restrained eaters spent more time on pre-target regions in the food-word valid preview conditions, which indicated a parafoveal food-word processing superiority for restrained eaters (i.e. the parafoveal-on-foveal effect). The superiority of foveal food-word processing provides new insights into explaining food-related attentional bias in general groups. Additionally, the enhanced food-word attentional bias in parafoveal processing for restrained eaters illustrates the importance of individual characteristics in studying word recognition.

Milton in China

Milton in China

The influence of foveal load on parafoveal processing of N + 2 during Chinese reading

ABSTRACT According to the foveal load hypothesis, parafoveal processing is influenced by the difficulty of current foveal processing. It remains unclear whether foveal load may affect the extent of parafoveal processing. This is an important consideration given the evidence that Chinese readers may frequently pre-process word N + 2 when N + 1 is one character. Accordingly, the current study manipulated word frequency to explore the influence of foveal load on parafoveal processing of N + 2 using a 2 (foveal load: high-frequency, low-frequency) × 2 (preview condition: identical preview, pseudo-character preview) within-subject design. Main effects of foveal load were found for the foveal word N, with longer fixations for low- than for high-frequency words and a main effect of preview was also found for N + 2, with longer fixations for pseudo-character preview compared to identical preview. Crucially, there was no interaction between foveal load and preview condition, indicating that parafoveal processing of word N + 2 is not influenced by foveal load during natural Chinese reading.

Big Data Analysis on Features of Wang Jinhua's Chinese Translation of Emily Dickinson's Poetry

The American poetess, Emily Dickinson, whose poems have entered textbooks of Chinese university, primary and middle schools for many years, has become a well-known foreign poet for Chinese public. It is through Chinese translation that most Chinese readers come into contact with Dickinson's poems, yet study on Chinese translation of Dickinson's poetry which will help reveal characteristics of Chinese translation and thus contribute to the development of Dickinson studies and facilitate popularity of Emily Dickinson in China, is obviously insufficient at present. Based on text data of 243 translated poems in Wang Jinhua's collection of Chinese translation,Selected Dickinson’s Poems, and their original poems, programming approach is adopted to make statistics of vocabulary, part of speech, stanza and line, and punctuation of the original and the translated texts, and translation features of Wang's translation is revealed by contrastive analysis. It is found that vocabulary in Wang’s translation is less abundant than the original. Weights of nouns plus verbs in translation and the original text are close, accounting for about 45% respectively, but nouns performance in original text is more prominent, while verbs performance in translation is more significant. There are many additions of verbs in translation, while there are not much changes to original nouns, and sometimes new nouns are added as subjects of clauses, all of which making the translation smooth and easy to understand without lacking of gracefulness. There is little difference in the number of stanzas and verse lines between the original and Wang’s translation. Original dashes and commas have been changed a lot, either by omission or conversion, yet periods undergo little changes. Translation of exclamation marks and question marks is with high faithfulness to the original.

Cognitive Abilities Related to Reading and Writing Skills in Chinese Third-grade Children

In this study, we analysed the cognitive abilities that predict reading and writing attainment in the Chinese language for Mandarin-speaking children. A total of 140 Chinese third-graders studying in Ningbo, Zhejiang were evaluated for their visual cognition including visual perception and memory, naming speed, vocabulary knowledge, phonological skills, nonverbal intelligence, and abilities to read and write. The results of multiple regression analyses revealed that word and nonword reading accuracy were predicted to a significant degree by visual memory and phonological awareness, respectively. Naming speed significantly contributed to the reading speeds regarding words, nonwords, and paragraphs. Our results also showed that the scores in word and nonword reading predicted the scores of writing as well. Visual memory and phonological awareness are essential for reading Chinese accurately, while naming speed is an important factor for Chinese reading fluency. The present results have implications regarding the design of useful tasks that screen poor readers of Chinese.

An Automatic Question Generator for Chinese Comprehension

Question generation (QG) is a natural language processing (NLP) problem that aims to generate natural questions from a given sentence or paragraph. QG has many applications, especially in education. For example, QG can complement teachers’ efforts in creating assessment materials by automatically generating many related questions. QG can also be used to generate frequently asked question (FAQ) sets for business. Question answering (QA) can benefit from QG, where the training dataset of QA can be enriched using QG to improve the learning and performance of QA algorithms. However, most of the existing works and tools in QG are designed for English text. This paper presents the design of a web-based question generator for Chinese comprehension. The generator provides a user-friendly web interface for users to generate a set of wh-questions (i.e., what, who, when, where, why, and how) based on a Chinese text conditioned on a corresponding set of answer phrases. The web interface allows users to easily refine the answer phrases that are automatically generated by the web generator. The underlying question generation is based on the transformer approach, which was trained on a dataset combined from three publicly available Chinese reading comprehension datasets, namely, DRUD, CMRC2017, and CMRC2018. Linguistic features such as parts of speech (POS) and named-entity recognition (NER) are extracted from the text, which together with the original text and the answer phrases, are then fed into a machine learning algorithm based on a pre-trained mT5 model. The generated questions with answers are displayed in a user-friendly format, supplemented with the source sentences in the text used for generating each question. We expect the design of this web tool to provide insight into how Chinese question generation can be made easily accessible to users with low computer literacy.

Nikolay Кaramzin’s Dedication to the Emperor Alexander I as a Preamble to the “History of Russian State” in Manchu and Chinese Translation by Zakhar Leontievsky

The first official history of the Russian state Istoriia gosudarstva Rossijskogo (History of Russian State) was compiled by Nikolay Karamzin in 12 volumes (published in 18161828). The first eight volumes were printed in 18161818 and were most probably taken to Beijing by the members of the 10th Ecclesiastic mission (18201830). Among the students of that mission was Zakhar Leontievsky (17991874), who had spent ten years in Beijing and had perfectly mastered the Chinese and Manchu languages. During his stay in China, Leontievsky has translated into Chinese three volumes of Karamzins History of Russian state. Nowadays, the manuscript copies of this translation are kept in the Oriental collections in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian original by Karamzin begins with the Dedication to the Russian tzar Alexander I. Only the manuscript from the Oriental department of the Scientific library of the St. Petersburg state university has the Dedication translated into two languages Manchu and Chinese. The comparison of the Russian original with the Manchu and Chinese versions shows that the translations turn to be Leontievskys interpretations of the original text written according to the rules of Chinese addresses to the throne. Additional translators comments were added to explain some episodes from the Russian history to the Chinese reader. Zakhar Leontievskys translation of the History of Russian state was the first introduction of Russian history to China.

Reduction in right lateralized N2 error response to stroke order violations in poor Chinese word spellers: A study on event-related potential markers for Chinese reading and spelling

Stroke order knowledge is critical for Chinese reading and spelling acquisition. Previous studies have demonstrated enhancements of the N2 and P3 event-related potential (ERP) components at the Pz electrode to stroke order violations of Chinese characters in younger adults. However, it remained unclear whether similar ERP responses could be found in children. The current study investigated the ERP responses to stroke order violations of Chinese characters in children and examined the associations of the ERP responses with children’s Chinese reading and spelling performance. A total of 26 Grade 2 Hong Kong Chinese children observed stroke-by-stroke displays of Chinese characters and judged whether the Chinese characters were written in the correct order. The ERP results showed larger anterior N2 and posterior P3 at the midline electrodes to the incorrect strokes than to the correct strokes. In addition, a smaller right lateralized temporal N2 response to the incorrect strokes was found in poor spellers as compared with good spellers of Chinese. The effect of the right lateralized temporal N2 response on reading performance was fully mediated through spelling ability. These results demonstrated increases in the anterior N2 and posterior P3 responses to stroke order violation of Chinese characters in second graders and suggest the right lateralized N2 response as a potential neural marker of Chinese literacy development in children.

What is the role of audiovisual associative learning in Chinese reading?

What is the role of audiovisual associative learning in Chinese reading?

Early lexical processing of Chinese one-character words and Mongolian words: A comparative study using event-related potentials.

Logographic language and alphabetic language differ significantly in orthography. Investigating the commonality and particularity of visual word recognition between the two distinct writing systems is informative for understating the neural mechanisms underlying visual word recognition. In the present study, we compared the chronometry of early lexical processing and the brain regions involved in early lexical processing between Chinese (logographic language) and Mongolian (alphabetic language) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using both implicit and explicit reading tasks. Familiar Chinese one-character words (lexical) and unknown Chinese one-character words (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Chinese readers in Experiment 1. Mongolian words (lexical) and pseudowords (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Mongolian readers in Experiment 2. In the color decision task, participants were asked to decide the color (black or blue) of each stimulus. In the lexical recognition task, participants were asked to report whether they could recognize each stimulus. The results showed that in both experiments and both tasks, ERPs to lexical items differed significantly from those to non-lexical items in the parietooccipital scalp region approximately 250 ms after stimulus onset, reflecting the early lexical processing, which likely originated from the ventral occipitotemporal cortex as revealed by source analysis. These results indicated that although Chinese and Mongolian differed markedly in orthographic features, the neural mechanisms underlying early lexical processing are similar between the two languages.

Correction to: Morphological structure influences saccade generation in Chinese reading

Correction to: Morphological structure influences saccade generation in Chinese reading

The translation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and his intertextual world in China1

AbstractThe retranslations of Andersen's fairy tales in the twentieth century have promoted the canonization of Andersen in the modern Chinese literary system. Today, Chinese readers of different ages are fascinated by Andersen's works and the images created by him. However, the literary and cultural significance of Andersen to China lies in his influence. In this paper, the authors will first review the history of translating Andersen's fairy tales in China and then analyze some cases from Chinese literature and culture within the theoretical framework of intertextuality, in an attempt to specify the influence of Andersen on modern Chinese literature and culture. It is argued that Andersen's fairy tales have been cross‐culturally woven into Chinese children's as well as adult literature when the intertextual devices are applied by writers in their own literary creations; meanwhile the fictional elements of the tales are intertextually merged, as symbols, into other forms of cultural products where they are involved in a critical construction of modern Chinese culture.

Lexical ability in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: path analysis comparing higher- and lower-proficiency learners

ABSTRACT Lexical ability, an umbrella term to cover various knowledge and skills pertaining to words in print, is a key component in reading comprehension. Little is known how different facets of lexical ability jointly contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how the contributions may differ between higher- and lower-proficiency L2 learners. This study, based on 201 adults who had studied Chinese in China, explored direct and indirect effects of distinct facets of lexical ability on L2 reading comprehension. The participants completed three paper-pencil tasks that measured three facets of lexical ability, that is, morphological awareness, character knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge. Their short-term memory, grammatical knowledge, and reading comprehension were also measured. Separate sets of path analysis showed that higher- and lower-proficiency learners had distinct patterns of relationships. Whereas higher-proficiency learners relied more on morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension, lower-proficiency learners drew largely upon their character knowledge.

Произведения В.М. Шукшина в Китае: история переводов и рецепции творчества

We consider the history of translations and publications of V.M. Shukshin in China on the data first systematization basis on the publication of translations of the writer’s works into Chinese. The periodization of the reception of his work in the PRC is proposed, the reasons for the translations of V.M. Shukshin in China. The purpose of the study is a translations history systematic analysis of works by V.M. Shukshin in China, as well as determining the status and writer’s works role translated into Chinese in modern Chinese literature. For this purpose, we collect translations of the works of V.M. Shukshin into Chinese and the translator’s assessment of V.M. Shukshin. The sociological, cultural-historical method and statistical data are used, diagrams and tables are given to clearly and in detail show the translation of the works of V.M. Shukshin into Chinese. From these diagrams and tables one can see the translation of V.M. Shukshin in China and the perception specific process. The analysis results the show that the works of V.M. Shukshin were widely translated in China, and not only stories, but also screenplays and some of his journalistic articles were published in Chinese, works that are popular with Chinese readers and scholars. V.M. Shukshin is known in China as a writer, producer and actor. The results of this study can be practically useful for further research in China on the work of V.M. Shukshin and Russian literature in general.

The importance of the positional probability of word final (but not word initial) characters for word segmentation and identification in children and adults' natural Chinese reading.

Word spacing is important in guiding eye movements during spaced alphabetic reading. Chinese is unspaced and it remains unclear as to how Chinese readers segment and identify words in reading. We conducted two parallel experiments to investigate whether the positional probabilities of the initial and the final characters of a multicharacter word affected word segmentation and identification in Chinese reading. Two-character words were selected as targets. In Experiment 1, the initial character's positional probability was manipulated as being either high or low, and the final character was kept identical across the two conditions. In Experiment 2, an analogous manipulation was made for the final character of the target word. We recorded adults' and children's eye movements when they read sentences containing these words. In Experiment 1, reading times on targets did not differ in the two conditions for both children and adults, providing no evidence that a word initial character's positional probability contributes to word segmentation. In Experiment 2, adults had shorter reading times and made fewer refixations on targets that comprised final characters with high relative to low positional probabilities; a similar effect was observed in children, but this effect had a slower time course. The results demonstrate that the positional probability of the final (but not the initial) character of a word influences segmentation commitments in reading. It suggests that Chinese readers identify where a currently fixated word ends, and via this commitment, by default, they identify where the subsequent word begins. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of character positional frequency on word recognition during Chinese reading: Lexical decision and eye movements studies

The role of character positional frequency on word recognition during Chinese reading: Lexical decision and eye movements studies

The effect of lexical predictability on word processing in fast and slow readers during Chinese reading

The effect of lexical predictability on word processing in fast and slow readers during Chinese reading

建构主义学习理论下小学语文“整本书”阅读的教学策略

建构主义学习理论下小学语文“整本书”阅读的教学策略