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Developing Initial Literacy in Chinese

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Developing Initial Literacy in Chinese Chinese Early Language & Immersion Network 2016 Developing Initial Literacy in Chinese AUTHORS Introduction Michael E. Everson One of the biggest challenges of learning combine to form printed words. Chinese, on Emeritus Associate Professor, University of Iowa Chinese at any level of the K-16 spectrum the other hand, employs what are commonly is the challenge of literacy development, termed “characters,” written symbols that are Kevin Chang learning to read and write. This is not “spelled out,” as are letters in alphabets. Director of Chinese Program, Chinese American especially true when students are first Chinese characters often contain both sound International School introduced to Chinese orthography, its and meaning cues in their overall makeup; character-based writing system. This Brief however, these cues hint at rather than clearly Claudia Ross identify pronunciation and meaning, and Professor of Chinese, College outlines the issues that programs need to of the Holy Cross consider as students begin to develop learners have to take an extra step to decode literacy in Chinese. It also explains what it them. Over many millennia, tens of thousands CELIN BRIEF means that Chinese is a character-based of characters have evolved, though many have SERIES EDITORS language, describes differences between either fallen into disuse or are used in highly Shuhan C. Wang, Ph.D. specialized fields such as classical Chinese Project Director, CELIN simplified and traditional characters, discusses when and why to teach and use literature, medicine, history, and philosophy. Joy K. Peyton, Ph.D. hanyu pinyin (or pinyin in this Brief, a For native readers of modern Chinese, it is Senior Project Associate, system that uses the Roman alphabet to estimated that between 2,000 to 3,000 CELIN help learners sound out characters in characters are needed to accomplish most Mandarin), and makes recommendations reading functions on a daily basis (Dong, regarding ways to facilitate students’ 2014). Chinese children learn 3,500 characters initial literacy development. As students from first to ninth grade, spending hours each continue to develop Chinese oral day writing and rewriting characters until they proficiency and literacy, the teaching of are committed to memory. While individual reading and writing in the Chinese Chinese characters by themselves can be words, most words in Chinese are made up of two orthographic system requires a different set of skills, which will be addressed in characters in combination, such as in the words another CELIN Brief. “huo+shan” 火山 (fire+mountain=volcano) or CITATION “da+ren” 大人 (big+person=adult). Therefore, a Everson, M.E., Chang, K., & Chinese as a Character-Based learner’s vocabulary size is much larger than the Ross, C. (2016). Developing Language number of characters learned. initial literacy in Chinese. In S.C. Wang & J.K. Peyton The written Chinese language does not (Eds.), CELIN Briefs Series. employ an alphabet. An alphabet is a The Basics of Chinese Character New York, NY: Asia Society. system that uses letters or other symbols Structure to represent the sounds and words (form Chinese characters are not composed of CELIN Briefs are developed and meaning) of a language. Children randomly drawn elements, but instead reflect a by the Chinese Early learning to read a language such as highly evolved system of component parts that Language and Immersion English spend time in early elementary Network under the China recur in various rule-governed configurations. Learning Initiatives at Asia school learning how letters represent the The following terms describe components of Society. sounds of the language and how they Chinese character composition: 1 Strokes students have said that radicals provide an important aid Generally considered to be the primary building block of for learning and memorizing characters (Shen, 2005; Shen the Chinese character, strokes are dots, lines, or hooks & Ke, 2007). Generally, radicals appear in the left or top that are written in one movement of the pen (or, position of the character (Luo, Chen, Deacon, & Li, traditionally, the brush used in Chinese calligraphy) and 2011), and they are used to organize characters in a combine with other strokes to form a complete traditional Chinese dictionary. character. (For illustrations of this principle, see Semantic-Phonetic Compounds www.archchinese.com.) To compose a complete character, the strokes are written in a specific direction In addition to radical, semantic-phonetic compounds and order, which are practiced in highly standardized contain a phonetic component that provides a cue to the ways by children throughout the elementary school character’s pronunciation. For example, the characters years. While all Chinese children learn to write 请，晴, and 情 all contain the phonetic component 青, characters by learning strokes and following stroke order, which by itself is pronounced qing. The character 精 some Chinese teachers mistakenly believe that students contains 青 and is pronounced jing, still close to the learning Chinese as a foreign/world language in the pronunciation qing. In semantic-phonetic compound United States do not need to pay attention to strokes characters, the phonetic component usually occupies the and stroke order. However, research on Chinese right or bottom position of the character. Learners are language learners from elementary school through often able to use these phonetic elements to help them college has shown that learning strokes and stroke order learn or guess the pronunciation of characters (Anderson, makes it easier to remember characters (Guan, Liu, Li, Ku, Shu, & Wu, 2003; Shen, 2010). As Chinese Chan, Ye, & Perfetti, 2011; Knell & West, 2015). characters have evolved over time, the connection between Therefore, time and effort spent on this task are a phonetic component and the pronunciation important investments in the development of reading of the character reflects a range of variation, as shown in and writing skills in Chinese. the 青精examples. Learners need to accumulate their knowledge of a number of Chinese characters to be able to Radicals recognize the phonetic component, which is usually a It is estimated that in Modern Chinese, between 80 to stand-alone character in itself. As with radicals, learners 90% of the characters are semantic-phonetic compounds benefit from explicit instruction on phonetic elements, (Taylor & Taylor, 1995). Radicals are the semantic so that they notice and use them in their memorization of component of a character, which provides information characters. about its meaning. For example, the characters for “hit” 打, “push” 推, “pull” 拉, and “grab” 抓 all include the As their literacy ability grows, and as they are taught the skills to notice various parts of a character (strokes, stroke “hand” radical 扌. The characters for “mom,” 妈, order, radicals, and phonetic components of a character), “younger sister” 妹, “older sister” 姐, and “grandma” 奶 learners will find numerous recurring patterns that make 女 all have the female radical . When learners are taught up Chinese characters. Young learners, in particular, enjoy with attention to radicals, they can rely on the meaning learning Chinese characters, because they view the task as cues that they provide to narrow down, and therefore playing games such as sorting, grouping, classifying, facilitate informed guessing of the meanings of, determining what’s missing or what’s the same or characters they cannot recognize. Further, radicals can different, memorizing, and solving puzzles, all of which help learners reduce the cognitive load in memorizing contribute to cognition and higher order thinking skills. characters, because familiarity with radicals minimizes Because age-appropriate tasks can benefit learners at all the need to remember every stroke. In fact, research has levels and age groups, teachers should recognize the shown that teaching radicals to students helps them to importance of developing students’ higher order thinking better understand the principles of the writing system as skills throughout the K-12 Chinese language learning a whole (Lü, Koda, Zhang, & Zhang, 2015), and experience. AsiaSociety.org/CELIN Developing Initial Literacy in Chinese 2 Simplified and Traditional Characters becoming familiar with both the spoken and written Because of the complexity of the Chinese writing system Chinese language. To help solve this problem, Chinese has that has developed over time, there have been attempts employed Romanization, or systems that allow learners of throughout history to simplify Chinese characters by Chinese whose native language uses an alphabet to spell, reducing the number of strokes that many characters type, and read words and sentences in Mandarin Chinese have. The most significant reform of the writing system using the Roman alphabet initially. The most commonly in modern times came after 1949, when the People’s used Romanization system today is pinyin, employed in Republic of China simplified and codified a set of large part because it is the official Romanization system official forms of characters to improve national literacy. used in China and the standard system used by However, not all areas of the Chinese-speaking world newspapers and other media to represent Chinese names have adopted simplified characters as the standard form. and places. As a tool for literacy development among For example, China and Singapore have adopted Chinese children, it is used in China to help young simplified
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