Chinese Reading Research Articles

Applying the Task Assignment Method to Teaching Chinese Reading Comprehension Skills at the Basic Stage at Hung Vuong University

In the trend of global integration, Chinese is increasingly proving its important role as an international language, foreign language and culture subject in university programs. Chinese provides students with a new communication tool to absorb advanced scientific and technical knowledge, learn about rich cultural diversity, and easily integrate with the international community. The teaching staff of the Department of Chinese Language and Culture has been using a number of active teaching methods for Chinese Reading comprehension based on two pedagogical perspectives: "learner-centered" and “process-centric”. Among them, task-based teaching method (任务型教学法) is one of the important teaching methods. This is a task-based language teaching method in which instructors guide language learners in completing tasks in class.

The time course of Cantonese and Hong Kong Sign Language phonological activation: An ERP study of deaf bimodal bilingual readers of Chinese

This study investigated Cantonese and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) phonological activation patterns in Hong Kong deaf readers using the ERP technique. Two experiments employing the error disruption paradigm were conducted while recording participants’ EEGs. Experiment 1 focused on orthographic and speech-based phonological processing, while Experiment 2 examined sign-phonological processing. ERP analyses focused on the P200 (180–220 ms) and N400 (300–500 ms) components.The results of Experiment 1 showed that hearing readers exhibited both orthographic and phonological effects in the P200 and N400 windows, consistent with previous studies on Chinese reading. In deaf readers, significant speech-based phonological effects were observed in the P200 window, and orthographic effects spanned both the P200 and N400 windows. Comparative analysis between the two groups revealed distinct spatial distributions for orthographic and speech-based phonological ERP effects, which may indicate the engagement of different neural networks during early processing stages.Experiment 2 found evidence of sign-phonological activation in both the P200 and N400 windows among deaf readers, which may reflect the involvement of sign-phonological representations in early lexical access and later semantic integration. Furthermore, exploratory analysis revealed that higher reading fluency in deaf readers correlated with stronger orthographic effects in the P200 window and diminished effects in the N400 window, indicating that efficient orthographic processing during early lexical access is a distinguishing feature of proficient deaf readers.

Intelligent Chinese Typesetting Model Based on Information Importance Can Enhance Text Readability

In today’s era of information overload, efficiently extracting valuable information from a large volume of textual data has become a crucial challenge in reading. This study aimed to explore the enhancement of Chinese readability in the digital domain through intelligent typesetting method. This study involved two experiments. The purpose of the first experiment was to achieve the machine learning-based assessment of the importance of individual words in Chinese articles and to automate typesetting based on the importance of words. For the second experiment, readability tests and eye-tracking reading tests were performed and the reading performance and reading attention between intelligent typesetting and general typesetting style was compared. This work proposed three Chinese typesetting methods that distinguished the importance of Chinese text information, based on font size and color. The results showed that first, when reading Chinese text, visual attention was more likely to be drawn to larger font sizes, darker brightness, or warmer-colored characters. Second, intelligent Chinese typography that distinguishes information importance through font size, color brightness, and color hue can enhance Chinese reading comprehension accuracy and subjective evaluation. It was concluded that using the TextRank model to distinguish importance of Chinese vocabulary and intelligent typesetting methods based on visual features of font could obviously improve text readability. Specifically, readability achieved through intelligent typesetting method distinguishing information importance through font color brightness surpasses that of general typesetting significantly. These intelligent typesetting methods can be widely applied in Chinese reading scenarios, such as web pages, e-books, information visualization, and other Chinese reading contexts.

Neural correlates for word-frequency effect in Chinese natural reading.

Word frequency effect has always been of interest for reading research because of its critical role in exploring mental processing underlying reading behaviors. Access to word frequency information has long been considered an indicator of the beginning of lexical processing and the most sensitive marker for studying when the brain begins to extract semantic information Sereno & Rayner, Brain and Cognition, 42, 78-81, (2000), Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 489-493, (2003). While the word frequency effect has been extensively studied in numerous eye-tracking and traditional EEG research using the RSVP paradigm, there is a lack of corresponding evidence in studies of natural reading. To find the neural correlates of the word frequency effect, we conducted a study of Chinese natural reading using EEG and eye-tracking coregistration to examine the time course of lexical processing. Our results reliably showed that the word frequency effect first appeared in the N200 time window and the bilateral occipitotemporal regions. Additionally, the word frequency effect was reflected in the N400 time window, spreading from the occipital region to the central parietal and frontal regions. Our current study provides the first neural correlates for word-frequency effect in natural Chinese reading so far, shedding new light on understanding lexical processing in natural reading and could serve as an important basis for further reading study when considering neural correlates in a realistic manner.

Transwriting in Aleni’s Xingxue cushu: communicating the philosophy of human nature between the West and late Ming China

ABSTRACT Giulio Aleni’s Xingxue cushu 性學觕述 (A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature, 1623–1646) was a product of an ambitious project by the Jesuits in China to introduce Aristotle's natural philosophy to Chinese literati. The book, originally from the Cursus Conimbricensis (1592-1606), shows a good example of the interactions between transmitter and receptor in the encounter of Western culture with Chinese culture. This paper explores Aleni's linguistic strategy for placing Western concepts of human nature in dialogue with traditional Chinese thought. It argues that the work's favourable reception among Chinese scholars was due to Aleni's use of translation principles that anticipate transwriting. Namely, instead of direct translation Aleni adapted the text for his Chinese readers by rewriting partly, adding his own responses, borrowing Chinese classical terms and creatively interpreting these terms, quoting many Chinese classical allusions, and employing Chinesestyle arguments. These linguistic tools Aleni used facilitate the reader's understanding and acceptance of the Western philosophy of human nature. His linguistic success on communication between the two thoughts on human nature helps us redefine the concept of transwriting and find an in-between space for a rational philosophic and religious dialogue between China and the West.

Chinese Perspectives on Chinese Indentured Labourers during the First World War

ABSTRACT This article explores Chinese perspectives on the indenturing of Chinese labourers during the First World War and Chinese official intervention in the indenture system. In contrast to the Qing government’s reluctance to send people overseas, the Republican government formed in Peking in 1912 believed in integration into the international capitalist system, and that indentured Chinese labourers working abroad would benefit the country and its people. The government sought to regulate indentures to prevent the recruitment of labourers by rogue agents and to establish new standards for the indenturing system. To some extent this arrangement reflected the characteristics of a new system under which the labourer was relatively free. The popular press was the main vehicle through which the Chinese reading public constructed their perceptions of the indenture system. The terrible conditions endured by Chinese labourers in Russia was portrayed in newspapers as a consequence of the fraudulent practices of Chinese recruiting agents. Labourers recruited by the British and French were judged to have received better treatment. The perceptions of Chinese labourers and their families varied, but especially after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, their memories of indenture were influenced by anti-colonial and nationalist perspectives.

Reception of Work of Afanasy Fet in China

The article examines the issue of the appeal of Chinese translators and researchers to the works of Afanasy Fet. The theme of the reception of the works of Russian classics does not lose its relevance in the context of intercultural communication. The material for the study consisted of Fet’s poems translated into Chinese, which were included in collections of Russian poetry or published in China as separate books, as well as studies by literary scholars and translators. The history of the reception of Fet’s works in China is presented. Two periods have been identified during which the study of the Russian poet’s work was carried out differently. It is noted that in the first half of the 20th century, Fet’s lyrics were translated and studied to a lesser extent because, from the perspective of the Chinese reader and specialist, they were considered to lack social significance, which was particularly important during that period of China’s development. However, from the late 1970s, the reception of Fet’s works began to develop. It is shown that during this period, the focus of translators and literary scholars shifted towards studying the artistic features of Fet’s poetry. Chinese researchers highlight the musicality, impressionism, and aesthetic qualities of the poetry of this Russian classic.

Students’ perceived classroom goal structure and its relations with their achievement goals in Chinese reading classrooms

ABSTRACT Previous studies on achievement goals have rarely comprehensively discussed specific instructional dimensions of classroom goal structure. This study examined the relationships between different instructional dimensions of classroom goal structure and achievement goals among 833 eighth-grade students in a Chinese reading classroom context. The descriptive statistics indicated that students adopted high levels of trichotomous achievement goals and simultaneously perceived a high mastery-oriented goal structure and high task and autonomy/time dimensions of a performance-oriented goal structure. The results of structural equation modelling and the multiple-indicator and multiple-cause model showed that after controlling for school background variables, the task and recognition/evaluation dimensions of the mastery-oriented goal structure had significantly positive relationships with students’ mastery goals, and the recognition/evaluation dimension of the performance-oriented goal structure had significant and positive relationships with students’ performance goals. The findings indicate the necessity of examining the instructional dimensions of classroom goal structures in specific subjects and cultural backgrounds.

Did Chinese Buddhists translate the old formula ‘him I call a Brahmin’? The reconstruction of Buddhism as the path of nirvāṇa in Early Chinese translations

At first, Chinese translators lacked a unified criterion for interpreting Buddhist scriptures. They employed various phonetic transliterations and gradually adopted etymological approaches as their understanding developed. This study analyzes the Chinese translations of the oldest stratum of Pāli scriptures, focusing on the formula 'him I call a Brahmin', attributed in the Canon as the words of the Buddha. This formula has been preserved in Chinese Buddhist scriptures as well. However, Chinese translators did not always translate the formula literally. Their goal was to persuade Chinese readers that they were knowledgeable about the path of nirvāṇa.

Text, Materiality, and Practice

What can textual combinations, format, and size tell us about the worldviews of the donors, scribes, and readers of medieval Chinese Buddhist manuscripts? How can material sources inform us about the ways adherents both perceived and actively shaped their traditions? This essay offers answers to these questions through analysis of several manuscripts of the Scripture on the Cause and Effects of Wholesome and Unwholesome Acts (Shan’e yinguo jing 善惡因果經, T no. 2881), discovered in the Dunhuang Library Cave. The text was likely composed in Chinese, and it first appears in Buddhist catalogs in the year 695 ce. Extant manuscripts of Cause and Effects appear in both scroll and booklet formats and number at least fifty-two in total, a significant number that attests to the popularity of the text. This essay analyzes the textual content and literary techniques, relating both to physical aspects of the manuscripts. It examines the textual and the material together through the mediating concept of practice—in this case, medieval Chinese reading practices.

Predicting Chinese reading proficiency based on eye movement features and machine learning

Predicting Chinese reading proficiency based on eye movement features and machine learning

Column setting and text justification influence return-sweep eye movement behavior during Chinese multi-line reading

People regularly read multi-line texts in different formats and publishers, internationally, must decide how to present text to make reading most effective and efficient. Relatively few studies have examined multi-line reading, and fewer still Chinese multi-line reading. Here, we examined whether texts presented in single or double columns, and either left-justified or fully-justified affect Chinese reading. Text format had minimal influence on overall reading time; however, it significantly impacted return-sweeps (large saccades moving the eyes from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next). Return-sweeps were launched and landed further away from margins and involved more corrective saccades in single- than double-column format. For left- compared to fully-justified format, return-sweeps were launched and landed closer to margins. More corrective saccades also occurred. Our results showed more efficient return-sweep behavior for fully- than left-justified text. Moreover, there were clear trade-off effects such that formats requiring increased numbers of shorter return-sweeps produced more accurate targeting and reduced numbers of corrective fixations, whereas formats requiring reduced numbers of longer return-sweeps caused less accurate targeting and an increased rate of corrective fixations. Overall, our results demonstrate that text formats substantially affect return-sweep eye movement behavior during Chinese reading without affecting efficiency and effectiveness, that is, the overall time it takes to read and understand the text.

Predictors of Chinese reading in Chinese monolingual and Chinese–English bilingual children in Mainland China

AbstractThere is a growing number of children learning to read in bilingual environments, yet research on the uniqueness of reading acquisition in these bilingual children, particularly L1 majority bilinguals, is limited. With a sample size of 690 4th-grade students, this study investigated predictors influencing L1 Chinese reading in Chinese–English bilingual children (n = 345) attending Chinese–English bilingual schools in mainland China and made comparisons with their monolingual counterparts (n = 345). The results of a multi-group path analysis revealed both similarities and differences between the two groups. In terms of Chinese reading comprehension, word reading and linguistic comprehension were significant predictors for both groups, but their relative importance differed. While there was no difference in the predictive power between the two predictors in the monolingual group, word reading held a greater contribution in the bilingual group. Regarding Chinese word reading, both morphological and orthographic awareness emerged as significant predictors in the monolingual group, whereas in the bilingual group, only morphological awareness was significant, and the contribution of phonological awareness was insignificant in either group. These findings underscore the distinct relationship between reading and its predictive constituents in bilingual students when compared to their monolingual counterparts.

Parafoveal Processing of Orthography, Phonology, and Semantics during Chinese Reading: Effects of Foveal Load.

The foveal load hypothesis assumes that the ease (or difficulty) of processing the currently fixated word in a sentence can influence processing of the upcoming word(s), such that parafoveal preview is reduced when foveal load is high. Recent investigations using pseudo-character previews reported an absence of foveal load effects in Chinese reading. Substantial Chinese studies to date provide some evidence to show that parafoveal words may be processed orthographically, phonologically, or semantically. However, it has not yet been established whether parafoveal processing is equivalent in terms of the type of parafoveal information extracted (orthographic, phonological, semantic) under different foveal load conditions. Accordingly, the present study investigated this issue with two experiments. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which foveal load was manipulated by placing a low- or high-frequency word N preceding a critical word. The preview validity of the upcoming word N + 1 was manipulated in Experiment 1, and word N + 2 in Experiment 2. The parafoveal preview was either identical to word N + 1(or word N + 2); orthographically related; phonologically related; semantically related; or an unrelated pseudo-character. The results showed robust main effects of frequency and preview type on both N + 1 and N + 2. Crucially, however, interactions between foveal load and preview type were absent, indicating that foveal load does not modulate the types of parafoveal information processed during Chinese reading.

Does meaningful background speech modulate predictability effects during Chinese reading?

ABSTRACT Previous research indicates that background speech disrupts reading comprehension processes, but it remains unclear whether the disruption derives from semantic or phonological speech properties, and whether it affects early lexical processing or later sentence integration. Native Chinese speaking participants read sentences containing high- or low-predictability words under meaningful Chinese speech, meaningless Uyghur speech or silence conditions. Results showed that Chinese but not Uyghur speech produced increased total fixations compared to reading in silence, suggesting disruption was semantic in nature. While a standard predictability effect was comparable across background speech conditions in target word analyses, this effect disappeared in the Chinese speech condition in later measures and regions. The findings suggest that Chinese background speech may delay higher order (post-lexical) processing associated with sentence integration during reading, with implications for the Interference-by-Process hypothesis.

How Medieval Lifestyle in Fantasy Literature Attracts Chinese

The medieval lifestyle has been realized as an element in fantasy literature, which can create an imaginary world and attract readers with historical features. The aim of the present research was to explore the effects of medievalism in fantasy works and analyze its influence on Chinese readers. The Lord of the Rings was chosen to be the example, and a qualitative method was executed to categorize and analyze Chinese readers reactions to the example. Tables and word clouds illustrated the popularity of the Lord of the Rings in China and the reasons why Chinese readers were attracted by the story. Results showed that medievalism as symbols in the fantasy works provided the story with exoticism and pastoralism. And Chinese readers can be attracted by symbols and the values behind them. In view of these findings, this research revealed the possibility that masterpieces with general values can be admired by readers from other parts of the world.

Scope assignment in quantifier-negation sentences in early Korean-Chinese bilinguals’ grammars

Quantifier-negation sentences allow an inverse scope reading in many languages, but this phenomenon is not observed in Chinese. Building on the work of Chen and Huan (2023), this study investigates whether early Korean-Chinese bilinguals can make a distinction between Korean and Chinese in terms of the inverse scope. Employing the sentence-picture matching truth value judgment experiment from Chen and Huan (2023), we recruited a group of 23 early Korean-Chinese bilinguals and 15 monolingual Korean speakers. The experimental results aligned with those of Chen and Huan (2023), which identified three distinct groups of bilinguals. The first group permits an inverse scope reading in both Korean and Chinese, the second group prohibits it in both languages, and the third group successfully distinguishes between Korean and Chinese regarding inverse scope. These findings suggest that early bilinguals may experience long-lasting crosslinguistic influence that extends into adulthood. They may adopt either of two opposite strategies when constructing sentences, both of which can potentially minimize syntactic differences between their two languages.

The Long-term Effect of Cantonese Usage under the Dominance of Mandarin on Academic Performance

Researches on the effect of bilingualism/diglossia on academic performance conclude disparately yet converge on the children of early school age. This research aims to figure out the longer-term influence of Cantonese usage on academic performance by conducting a large sample survey and the Chinese reading literacy assessment of PISA 2018 on 100 young citizens aged 18 to 25 in Guangdong province. In addition to reconfirming the vastness of Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals in Guangdong province, China, The Language History Questionnaire 3 detected a categorically strong dominance of Mandarin in the Cantonese districts of Guangdong. Nevertheless, it is still not suggested that the Guangdong parents preclude Cantonese from family language planning out of worry about the childrens academic performance, drawing on the result that no negative effect of Cantonese usage was found in the correlation test.

Research on Teaching Strategies of Group Reading in Primary Chinese based on Learning Task Group

This paper aims to explore the teaching strategy of group reading in primary school Chinese language education based on learning task groups. Through the construction of theoretical framework or conceptual model, the design and implementation of this teaching strategy are systematically expounded. Firstly, an overview of primary school Chinese language education, group reading teaching, and learning task group theory is provided, laying a theoretical foundation for the subsequent research. Then, the design principles, implementation steps, and preparation of teaching resources for the teaching strategy based on learning task groups are elaborated in detail. In the results section, the impact of this teaching strategy on students' reading levels and learning outcomes is analyzed. Finally, in the discussion and analysis section, the effectiveness of the teaching strategy is analyzed and evaluated, and comparisons with previous studies are made, along with prospects for future research. The conclusion summarizes the main findings of the study and discusses its contributions and implications for primary school Chinese language education, providing suggestions and insights for improving teaching practices.

Literary Criticism of China about F. M. Dostoevsky’s Novel “The Idiot”

This paper examines the literary criticism of China about F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” (1868), which has been the focus of attention of various readership, as well as the issues of perception and study of the novel in modern Chinese theory of literary criticism. Hence, the purpose of this article is to trace the history of literary criticism of the “The Idiot” in China over the past almost ninety years since its first publication in Chinese in 1935. It is noted that during this period the novel was translated into Chinese at least seventeen times with millions of copies released, withstanding more than 50 editions. It also provides an overview of the studies of Chinese scientists in recent years devoted to the study of the novel, and attempts are made to identify trends in the study and commentary of the novel in China. Chinese readers were first introduced to Dostoevsky’s work by the famous novelist, literary critic and translator Zhou Zuozhen. The conducted research allows us to conclude that Chinese readers accept and interpret F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” with great interest. The questions that the researchers raise in their writings confirm the hypothesis that the Chinese reader associates the main character Prince Myshkin with the Confucian category of Ren.