Preferences in Learning Hiragana : A Comparative Study Between Mobile Apps and Paper Worksheets

In 2020, technology is generally accepted, and we can see many people using their digital devices such as smartphones everywhere. It is easy to see how dependent we are on technology, anytime and anywhere. Mobile apps are one of the time-effective tools for our daily lives. College students in the United States are always busy with their classes and assignments, and for them, apps are not only for having fun but are also convenient, reliable, and essential supporting tools for their academic and daily lives. This paper examines the students’ preferences in learning the Japanese writing system “Hiragana” with mobile apps and paper worksheets. The study had 14 participants who joined a 4-day-a-week class. The participants were asked to use both the app “Ganbatte kana” and copies of the worksheet “Purinto Kizzu” to practice Hiragana in and out of class. After all four classes over 1 week, the participants answered a questionnaire about the class and what they thought of using the paper and the app to study Hiragana based on their experience. The results of this study showed that most students preferred the paper to the app. While most of them use their smartphones every day, they have an attachment to paper. Some of them preferred physical experiences more than digital experiences for writing. However, most of them appreciate the app’s multifunctionality and convenience, and half of them want to use both apps and paper for their future learning. If we can use both in each strong area effectively, we can expect new technology and traditional materials to become more satisfying and useful learning tools

Teaching Both Simplified and Traditional Characters to Learners of Chinese as L2

In the acquisition of Chinese as a second language, learning Chinese characters is an essential part of the learning process. There are various approaches to how and when Chinese characters should be introduced. Some scholars claim simplified characters should be given priority, while others promote teaching traditional characters first. Yet to some, teaching traditional and simplified characters simultaneously is preferable, while others believe that learning Hanyu Pinyin alone reduces the learning load and advocate the idea that learning characters be postponed to the later stages. This study discusses reading priorities for students of L2 Chinese in an environment that promotes balanced teaching of traditional and simplified characters from scratch. Results show that most learners prefer simplified characters though the number of students who equally acquired both characters in a set is also high. Fewer students prefer traditional characters, whereas texts in Hanyu Pinyin were not students’ preferred choice. Moreover, learners’ text comprehensions were better and more accurate when texts were written in characters

The Influence of L1 Background and Other Meta-linguistic and Background Variables on the Learning of Pinyin and Hanzi by Arabic and English Learners of Chinese as a Second Language

Alphabetic Pinyin and morphosyllabic Hanzi are two different writing systems used in the Chinese language. Though Pinyin and Hanzi utilize different orthographies, the development of literacy skills in both writing systems depends on phonological processing skills. Becoming aware of the phonological structure in Chinese and the orthographic structure in Hanzi are crucial for the growth of literacy skills in Pinyin and Hanzi. The present study investigated the influence of L1 background and other meta-linguistic and background variables on Chinese phonological awareness, phonetic radical awareness, Pinyin spelling, Hanzi reading and Hanzi writing among adult Arabic and English CSL learners. There are five important findings from this study. First, L1 background influenced the performance in Chinese phonological awareness and Pinyin spelling, in which the English participants outperformed the Arabic participants arguably due to the greater similarities in phonology and orthography between English and Pinyin. Second, the Arabic participants’ better achievements in Hanzi writing compared to the English participants might originate from their experience in using the Arabic script and in learning two different scripts. Third, the two CSL groups did not differ in phonetic radical awareness or Hanzi reading, probably due to the unique characteristics of Hanzi orthography and the far distance between Arabic, English and Hanzi. Fourth, L1 background influenced the importance of phonological awareness and phonetic radical awareness in developing Chinese literacy skills, which might relate to the different orthographies used in English and Arabic, as well as the learning contexts. Fifth, Chinese language proficiency, the length of staying in China, the number of languages previously learnt, phonological working memory and phonetic coding ability significantly predicted the Arabic and English CSL learners’ performance in these measures. Theoretical implications for understanding the role of L1 transfer in L2 literacy acquisition, and educational implications for teaching Chinese as a second language were discussed

The Nature of Writing – A Theory of Grapholinguistics [book cover]

Cover illustration: Purgatory: Canto VII – The Rule of the Mountain from A Typographic Dante (2008) by Barrie Tullett (also displayed in Barrie Tullett, Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology, London: Laurence King Publishing, 2014, p. 167). With kind permission by Barrie Tullett. The text is taken from Dante. The Divine Comedy, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, Harmondsworth­Middlesex: The Penguin Classics, 1949. On the lower part of the illustration, one can read the concluding verses of the Canto: But now the poet was going on before; “Forward!” said he; “look how the sun doth stand Meridian­high, while on the Western shore Night sets her foot upon Morocco’s strand.

Investigating Semantic Alignment in Character Learning of Chinese as a Foreign Language: The Use and Effect of the Imagery Based Encoding Strategy

For learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), character learning is frustrating. This research postulated that this difficulty may mainly come from a lack of semantic understanding of character-denoted meanings. Language theories support that when a learner’s semantic meaning increases, the orthographic structures that represent the underlying meanings also improve. This study aimed to reveal CFL learners’ cognitive abilities and processes in visual-semantic learning of Chinese characters. Particularly, this study investigated the process by which English-speaking adolescent CFL learners, at the beginning to intermediate level, made mental images of character-denoted meanings to visually encode and retrieve character forms. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from image making questionnaires, writing, and reading tests, after learning characters in three commonly-used teaching methods (i.e., English, pictorial, and verbal). The data were analyzed based on a triangulation of the literature from Neuro-Semantic Language Learning Theory, scientific findings in cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. The study found that participants’ semantic abilities to understand character-denoted meanings emerged, but were still restricted in familiar orthographic forms. The use of the imagery strategy as a semantic ability predicted better performances, most evidently in writing; however, the ability in using the imagery strategy to learn characters was still underdeveloped, and needed to be supported with sufficient contextual information. Implications and further research in visual-semantic learning and teaching characters were suggested

Assessing the Effectiveness of Personalized Computer-Administered Feedback in an Introductory Biology Course

Though often held in high regard as a pedagogical tool, the role of feedback within the learning process remains poorly understood. The prevailing feedback literature reveals a history of inconsistent if not contradictory findings. This already complicated state is made worse by the recent introduction of learning analytic tools capable of providing students with ongoing personalized computer-generated feedback; the effectiveness of which remains unknown. The present study contributed to this new domain of knowledge by evaluating one such circumstance where a learning analytic feedback intervention was implemented in an introductory biology course at the University of Saskatchewan. The system provided personalized feedback to half of the enrolled students differentiated according their individual characteristics. The remaining students received generic feedback that was common to all students within the condition. The effectiveness of personalized feedback was evaluated with respect to academic achievement (i.e., final grade) and feedback satisfaction. Results of the treatment effect analyses showed no significant differences in student academic achievement but a small significant difference in feedback satisfaction. Follow-up analyses revealed that these significant differences in feedback satisfaction were not consistent from one iteration of the course to the next and that mean feedback satisfaction was in steady decline since the system’s implementation. It is suspected that the lack of improvement in academic achievement pertained to poor adherence of the system with the theoretical underpinnings of good feedback practice. Limitations of the study and future directions are discussed

L2 Chinese character recognition: exploring the developmental patterns and benefits of radical awareness training via lexical decision priming tasks

Due to the features of the Chinese writing system, character reading is a challenging task for L2 learners with an alphabetic background. In the field of Chinese character acquisition, numerous studies (Feldman and Siok 1999; Zhou and Marslen-Wilson 2000; William and Bever 2010; Wu et al. 2012; Zhou et al. 2013; Yeh et al. 2017; Tong et al. 2021) focus on the process of L1 character recognition and, to a far less extent, on L2 learners’ character decoding (Williams 2013). However, the development of L2 character processing patterns has not yet been singled out. This research is intended to contribute to this endeavour by outlining developmental stages of the intermediate and advanced level. The goal is to identify the patterns of L2 learners’ character processing at these two proficiency levels and compare them to the processing pattern activated by L1 readers. The study also aims to explore the modelling effect of a radical awareness training. The prediction is that (a) by increasing the knowledge of the semantic and phonetic information carried by character subcomponents, L2 learners can develop a more native-like word recognition pattern, and (b) that such improvement is also conditioned by L2 learners’ proficiency level. The method employed is a lexical decision task based on the (semantic or phonological) activation of primes on target characters at the lexical and sublexical levels. The present study analyses the process of visual character recognition by an experimental group of 29 L2 learners (13 in the critical group and 16 in the pilot group), compared to the performance of 37 native speakers (the control group), via priming experiments based on a set of 336 pairs of prime and target characters. The cycle test includes four stages of an average span of 10 days, including one week of formal Chinese study (about 18 hours) in between two priming tests. The second test is a repetition of the first test. More specifically, the cycle test consists of a radical knowledge test (only for L2 groups), the first priming experiment (for both L1 and L2 groups), a radical awareness training and the second priming experiment (only for the L2 critical group). The statistical significance of the data has been primarily calculated using the t-Test. Concerning the control group of native speakers, the data are consistent with previous literature and show that (i) they read single characters at about the same speed as compound characters; (ii) the default processing is associated with the semantic information retrieval; (iii) semantic radicals are prioritised over phonetic radicals. Compared to the native speakers, intermediate learners displayed a different processing pattern and advanced learners displayed a similar processing pattern showing a developmental trend: (iv) intermediate learners read single characters faster than compound characters while advanced learners read them at a similar speed to native speakers; (v) intermediate learners used more phonological strategy than semantic strategy while advance learners prioritised the semantic strategy like native speakers; (vi) intermediate learners read phonetic radicals faster than semantic radicals while advanced learners read semantic radicals faster and closer to native speakers; hence, (vii) the degree of similarity to the native speakers’ pattern increases with the level of proficiency. Lastly, (viii) the Radical Awareness Training contributes to a more native-like processing at the sublexical level for both intermediate and advanced learners. In sum, it proves a shift from phonological- and phonetic-radical- oriented processing to semantic- and semantic-radical- oriented processing. This shift took place during the third year of formal Chinese study (between 240-360 hours). The data has shown that L2 character recognition is a developing and modifiable process. As for pedagogical implications, the research has also proven that class instruction and individual study, even for a relatively short period, can speed up the development of character processing towards a more efficient, native-like pattern. In addition, the overall results have suggested the importance of formal instruction on sublexical decomposition. They also indicate the importance of presenting the phonetic information carried by the subcomponents rather than limiting the scope to their semantic value, as typically done in classroom activities on radicals

Uncovering the myth of learning to read Chinese characters: phonetic, semantic, and orthographic strategies used by Chinese as foreign language learners

Oral Session - 6A: Lexical modeling: no. 6A.3Chinese is considered to be one of the most challenging orthographies to be learned by non-native speakers, in particular, the character. Chinese character is the basic reading unit that converges sound, form and meaning. The predominant type of Chinese character is semantic-phonetic compound that is composed of phonetic and semantic radicals, giving the clues of the sound and meaning, respectively. Over the last two decades, psycholinguistic research has made significant progress in specifying the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in character processing among native Chinese speakers …postprin

(Dis)connections between specific language impairment and dyslexia in Chinese

Poster Session: no. 26P.40Specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia describe language-learning impairments that occur in the absence of a sensory, cognitive, or psychosocial impairment. SLI is primarily defined by an impairment in oral language, and dyslexia by a deficit in the reading of written words. SLI and dyslexia co-occur in school-age children learning English, with rates ranging from 17% to 75%. For children learning Chinese, SLI and dyslexia also co-occur. Wong et al. (2010) first reported on the presence of dyslexia in a clinical sample of 6- to 11-year-old school-age children with SLI. The study compared the reading-related cognitive skills of children with SLI and dyslexia (SLI-D) with 2 groups of children …postprin