Orthographical errors in beginning and intermediate learners of L2 Japanese from two L1s

Although the development of orthographic knowledge has been well-documented in L1 English children, relatively little work has examined orthographic development in L2 learners, particularly of non-English languages. This paper presents preliminary results from a longitudinal and cross-sectional study of orthographic knowledge development in 81 adult L2 Japanese learners in their first and second years of language study. Results show changing patterns of frequent error types across development, as well as different patterns of errors between learners with L1 English vs. L1 Chinese. These error types are compared across L1 groups and across time. Pedagogical implications are also discussed

The interaction between lexical and post-lexical processing in Chinese writing across grades

"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2009."Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2009.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Disentangled Phonetic Representation for Chinese Spelling Correction

Chinese Spelling Correction (CSC) aims to detect and correct erroneous characters in Chinese texts. Although efforts have been made to introduce phonetic information (Hanyu Pinyin) in this task, they typically merge phonetic representations with character representations, which tends to weaken the representation effect of normal texts. In this work, we propose to disentangle the two types of features to allow for direct interaction between textual and phonetic information. To learn useful phonetic representations, we introduce a pinyin-to-character objective to ask the model to predict the correct characters based solely on phonetic information, where a separation mask is imposed to disable attention from phonetic input to text. To avoid overfitting the phonetics, we further design a self-distillation module to ensure that semantic information plays a major role in the prediction. Extensive experiments on three CSC benchmarks demonstrate the superiority of our method in using phonetic information.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2023 Main Conferenc

The effect of musical training on verbal and tonal working memory

This dissertation explored the translation from print to sound of the tonal language Mandarin versus English versus musical notation in healthy volunteers. The performance of musicians and non-musicians was compared across a variety of reading tasks in an attempt to examine whether musical training can facilitate Mandarin tone or phonological processing. The effects of increasing working memory load on reading performance across tasks were also examined. Results showed that increasing demands on working memory in visual recognition tasks significantly decreased performance accuracy for both musicians and non-musicians across tasks. Significant differences in accuracy rates were observed between musicians and non-musicians. Although the tonal information in Mandarin is embedded in phonological information, the current study provided evidence that musicians are better able to extract this tonal information from print than are non-musicians, or to maintain it in working memory. Even in the Mandarin homophone task, which requires phonological judgments of print, the musicians demonstrated superior performance. The current study provides evidence that musical training facilitates phonological language processing

Orthographic Learning via Self-Teaching: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit Fragen des orthographischen Lernprozesses einer nicht-alphabetischen, chinesischen Schrift durch Self-Teaching. Orthographisches Lernen ist definiert als der Prozess, durch den Kinder im Gedächtnis Repräsentationen von Wortformen anlegen. So werden automatisierte Worterkennung und damit flüssiges Lesen möglich. Die Self-Teaching-Hypothese besagt, dass sich die automatisierte Worterkennung durch einen Mechanismus selbstständigen Lernens entwickelt, der Kinder befähigt, die Orthographie neuer Wörter Item für Item zu erlernen. Für diesen Mechanismus ist die phonologische Rekodierung wichtig. Auch die chinesische Orthographie kann aufgrund der internen Struktur der Schriftzeichen und aufgrund der sublexikalischen Phonologie und Semantik durch Self-Teaching erworben werden. Mindestens vier Fünftel aller chinesischen Schriftzeichen sind Phonogramme. Die phonetischen und semantischen Radikale, die in die chinesischen Phonograme eingebettet sind, wurden für vier Experimente nach dem Self-Teaching-Paradigma (Share, 1999) genutzt. An den ersten zwei Experimenten nahmen Drittklässler teil, die anderen beiden waren auf Zweitklässler abgestimmt. Alle Teilnehmer wurden gebeten, selbstständig Kurztexte vorzulesen. Die innere Struktur des Target-Pseudo-Schriftzeichens und die Häufigkeit seiner Darbietung wurden innerhalb der Kurztexte manipuliert. Sowohl unmittelbar nach der Lesephase als auch nach einem dreitägigen Intervall wurden zwei Tests durchgeführt, eine orthographische Entscheidungsaufgabe und eine orthographische Produktionsaufgabe, um den Erfolg des orthographischen Lernens zu erfassen. Das vorrangige Ziel der Experimente war es zu untersuchen, inwiefern orthographisches Lernen im Sinne der Self-Teaching-Hypothese in der visuell komplexen, nicht-alphabetischen chinesischen Schrift möglich ist. Darüber hinaus wurde untersucht, ob Radikale eine Rolle in diesem Lernprozess spielen. Experiment 1 untersuchte den Einfluss von Zhuyin auf den orthographischen Lernprozess im Chinesischen. Zhuyin sind spezielle Zeichen in taiwanesischen Kinderbüchern, die Informationen über die Aussprache unbekannter Schriftzeichen geben. Zhuyin ist vollständig phonologisch transparent und dem Alphabet ähnlich. Basierend auf der Self-Teaching-Hypothese würden externe phonologische Hilfsmittel, in diesem Fall Zhuyin, die Aufmerksamkeit der Kinder von den orthographischen Details ablenken. Diese Vorhersage wurde durch die Ergebnisse von Experiment 1 bestätigt: In den Bedingungen ohne Zhuyin zeigten sich in beiden Tests deutlich stärkere Lerneffekte als in den Bedingungen mit Zhuyin. Im Anschluss an die Beobachtung, dass Zhuyin orthographisches Lernen im Chinesischen beeinträchtigt, befasste sich Experiment 2 mit der Frage, ob phonetische Radikale ausreichend für funktionales Lernen der chinesischen Orthographien sind. Gemäß der Self-Teaching-Hypothese ist davon auszugehen, dass die phonologische Rekodierung kritisch für das orthographischen Lernen ist. Trotzdem (und entgegen der Annahme) unterstützte Zhuyin, also die Angabe der genauen Aussprache, den Prozess des orthographischen Lernens im Chinesischen nicht. Eine mögliche Erklärung dafür ist, dass die Information zur phonetischen Rekodierung, die in das Target-Pseudo-Schriftzeichen selbst eingebettet sind, entscheidend dazu beitragen, Chinesisch lesen zu lernen. In Experiment 2 wurde die Verfügbarkeit der eingebetteten phonetischen Radikale in den Targets manipuliert. In beiden Tests zeigte sich ein robusterer Lerneffekt für Targets mit gegenüber Targets ohne phonetisches Radikal. Ähnlich der morpho-semantischen Information im Englischen kann das semantische Radikal in chinesischen Schriftzeichen eine weitere nützliche Ressource im Erwerb der Lesefähigkeit im Chinesischen sein. Experiment 3 untersuchte den Cueing-Effekt semantischer Radikale, indem entweder solche semantischen Radikale in die Target-Pseudo-Schriftzeichen eingebettet wurden, die einen Hinweis (Cue) auf die Bedeutung geben, oder solche, die keinen Hinweis liefern. Die Teilnehmer zeigten signifikant bessere Leistungen, wenn das semantische Radikal auf die Bedeutung des Targets verwies, als wenn es keinen Hinweis bot. Das Ergebnis weist darauf hin, dass semantische Radikale in ihrer Funktion, auf die Bedeutung der Schriftzeichen hinzuweisen, ebenfalls einen Beitrag zum Erwerb der chinesischen Orthographie leisten. Es ist bekannt, dass die semantische Transparenz den Worterkennungsprozess im Chinesischen beeinflusst. Es ist zu vermuten, dass sie auch das orthographische Lernen beeinflusst. Semantische Transparenz wird als Grad der Übereinstimmung der Bedeutung des semantischen Radikals mit der Bedeutung des gesamten Schriftzeichens definiert. Letztere soll in den Experimenten dieser Studie aus dem Kontext erschlossen werden. Folglich manipulierte Studie 4 die Übereinstimmung zwischen der Target-Bedeutung, die der Kontext nahelegte und der Bedeutung, auf die das semantische Radikal schließen ließ. Es zeigte sich ein genereller, wenn auch nicht-signifikanter Trend in Richtung besserer Lernleistungen für die Bedingungen mit intransparenten semantischen Radikalen. Dies könnte damit zusammenhängen, dass Zweitklässler im Unterschied zu Erwachsenen den semantischen Aspekt auf globaler Ebene noch nicht vollständig nutzen können. Zusammenfassend unterstützt die Dissertation die These, dass die chinesische Orthographie in einem Prozess des Self-Teaching erworben wird. Im Einklang mit der Self-Teaching-Hypothese äußerte sich orthographisches Lernen darin, dass Target-Schriftzeichen häufiger korrekt ausgewählt und häufiger korrekt geschrieben wurden. Ganz allgemein bedeutet das, dass die Self-Teaching-Hypothese auch dann gilt, wenn es um den Erwerb der Lesefähigkeit in einer nicht-alphabetischen Schrift geht. Taiwanesische Kinder lernen die traditionellen chinesischen Schriftzeichen, die visuell komplexer sind als das vereinfachte Skript, das in China benutzt wird. Dabei profitieren sie auch von den phonetischen und semantischen Informationen, die in die Schriftzeichen eingebettet sind, wenn sie sich selbst die orthographischen Details beibringen. Der selbstlernende Aspekt im orthographischen Lernprozess ist wohl universell in unterschiedlichen Schriftsystemen zu finden, und Phonologie spielt auch im Chinesischen für den Erwerb der Lesefähigkeit eine zentrale Rolle.This dissertation investigates the orthographic learning process of a non-alphabetic Chinese script via self-teaching. Orthographic learning is the process by which children commit word forms to memory. Successful orthographic learning leads to automaticity with word recognition; in turn, automated, efficient word recognition facilitates fluent reading. The self-teaching hypothesis proposes that reading fluency is built up via a self-teaching mechanism that empowers orthographic learning of new words on an item-by-item basis. Central to the self-teaching mechanism is phonological recoding. The internal structure properties of Chinese characters and the sublexical phonology and semantics also permit developing readers to self-teach Chinese orthographic forms. More than 80% of the Chinese characters are phonograms. Taking advantage of the phonetic and semantic radicals embedded in Chinese phonograms, four studies were carried out following Share’s (1999) self-teaching paradigm. The first two targeted young readers in Grade 3, whereas the other two studies focused on children in Grade 2. Participants were asked to independently read aloud short texts where the internal structure of target pseudocharacters and the number of exposure were manipulated. Two posttests, including an orthographic choice task and a spelling task, were administered both immediately after the reading phase and after a 3-day interval to measure orthographic learning. The overriding aim of all studies was to explore the possibility of orthographic learning via self-teaching in the visually complex, traditional Chinese script used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as distinct from the simplified Chinese script used in China. Other aims were to look into issues as to whether radicals play a role in Chinese orthographic learning. Study 1 examined the effect of Zhuyin on Chinese orthographic learning. Zhuyin is the phonological aid system used to list pronunciations alongside unknown characters in Taiwanese child books; Zhuyin is completely transparent and alphabet-like. Based on the self-teaching hypothesis, extraneous phonological aids, such as Zhuyin, would divert children’s attention away from orthographic details. Favoring this prediction, the results on both posttest measures depicted a significantly stronger learning effect in conditions without Zhuyin than those with Zhuyin. Following up on the finding that Zhuyin did not give rise to optimal orthographic learning in Chinese, Study 2 looked at the issue whether phonetic radicals are sufficient for functional learning of Chinese orthographies. One of the fundamental tenets in the self-teaching theory is that phonological recoding is critical to orthographic learning. Zhuyin does not aid the process of Chinese orthographic learning by offering accurate pronunciations as much as previously assumed; it is thus arguable that the phonological recoding opportunities afforded by the phonetic radicals embedded in target pseudocharacters are crucial in learning to read Chinese. Through the manipulation of the availability of phonetic radicals embedded in targets, Study 2 reported a more robust learning effect on both posttest measures when targets were embedded with a phonetic radical than without. Similar to morpho-semantic information in English, the semantic hint embedded in Chinese characters might be another useful resource that unskilled readers can bring to bear upon Chinese orthographic learning. Study 3 tested the cueing effect of semantic radicals by embedding targets with cueing and non-cueing semantic radicals. Children performed significantly better in conditions with cueing semantic radicals than non-cueing ones; this demonstrated that the semantic radicals embedded in characters also modulated Chinese orthographic learning to a certain extent. Semantic transparency has been documented to influence Chinese word recognition; it is possible that semantic transparency also has an impact on orthographic learning. With the working definition that semantic transparency in orthographic learning refers to the semantic relatedness of an embedded semantic radical in relation to the semantic information that is to be instantiated into the target from the context, Study 4 manipulated thus the semantic relatedness between the level of embedded semantic radical and that of the context semantics. The results from Study 4, though not statistically significant, exhibited a general trend towards better learning in semantic opaque conditions. The finding might arise from the fact that, unlike established readers, 2nd grade children have yet to fully appreciate the semantic aspect at a global level. Taken together, the dissertation provided support to Chinese orthographic learning via self-teaching. Consistent with the self-teaching hypothesis, orthographic learning was evidenced with significantly more targets selected and more target spelling patterns reproduced than other alternatives. In general, the self-teaching hypothesis is also valid to account for learning to read in a non-alphabetic script, like Chinese. Taiwanese children learning to read a visually more complex, traditional Chinese script exploited the phonetic and semantic information that is embedded in the writing system to self-teach orthographic details. The self-teaching aspect of orthographic learning is hence universal across disparate writing systems, and phonology is also the key to learning to read Chinese

Phonological and visual short-term memory codification in English-Mandarin bilinguals

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Children learn to read and write Chinese analytically

Recent progress in psycholinguistic research on written Chinese allows us to develop a\ud new approach to investigate the Chinese reading acquisition process. We\ud hypothesized that Chinese children, much like children learning an alphabetic script,\ud do not simply learn written words by rote. As they are taught words to be learned by\ud rote, they develop an implicit understanding of the formal and functional\ud characteristics of written Chinese. The formal characteristics refer to the graphic\ud structure and the positioning of the stroke-patterns, and the functional characteristics\ud refer to the semantic and phonological information conveyed in the stroke-patterns.\ud The studies reported were designed to investigate the nature of children's learning of\ud written Chinese. In two series of studies, a total of 236 children from Hong Kong, aged\ud four to nine, created and decoded novel Chinese compound words. Results showed\ud that young Chinese children attended to both the formal and functional constraints in\ud reading and writing tasks. In the judging task, 4-year-olds were able to identify the\ud type of orthographic elements - the stroke-patterns, but they could not place them in\ud legitimate positions. The 6-years-olds were able to refer both to the position and the\ud correct type of orthographic elements in differentiating pseudowords from nonwords.\ud In the writing and reading tasks, four and five-year-olds were unable to utilize the\ud semantic radicals to represent meaning, nor could they use the phonological\ud components for pronunciation; six-year-olds could use the semantic radicals to\ud represent meaning and only nine-year-olds could both use semantic radicals correctly\ud and systematically referred to the phonological components for pronunciation. A\ud significant age difference was found in all the experiments. The studies provide strong\ud evidence that learning compound words in Chinese is not a simple matter of\ud memorizing but involves the understanding of formal and functional constraints in the\ud script. A possible application of these findings lies in the new direction offered for\ud reading instruction where the non-generative, rote view of learning to read and write in\ud Chinese can be safely abandoned