Children Learn to Read and Write Chinese Analytically Lily Chan Child Development and Learning Institute of Education, University of London Supervisors : Professor Terezinha Nunes Ms. Angela Hobsbaum A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 1996 2 Abstract Recent progress in psycholinguistic research on written Chinese allows us to develop a new approach to investigate the Chinese reading acquisition process. We hypothesized that Chinese children, much like children learning an alphabetic script, do not simply learn written words by rote. As they are taught words to be learned by rote, they develop an implicit understanding of the formal and functional characteristics of written Chinese. The formal characteristics refer to the graphic structure and the positioning of the stroke-patterns, and the functional characteristics refer to the semantic and phonological information conveyed in the stroke-patterns. The studies reported were designed to investigate the nature of children's learning of written Chinese. In two series of studies, a total of 236 children from Hong Kong, aged four to nine, created and decoded novel Chinese compound words. Results showed that young Chinese children attended to both the formal and functional constraints in reading and writing tasks. In the judging task, 4-year-olds were able to identify the type of orthographic elements - the stroke-patterns, but they could not place them in legitimate positions. The 6-years-olds were able to refer both to the position and the correct type of orthographic elements in differentiating pseudowords from nonwords. In the writing and reading tasks, four and five-year-olds were unable to utilize the semantic radicals to represent meaning, nor could they use the phonological components for pronunciation; six-year-olds could use the semantic radicals to represent meaning and only nine-year-olds could both use semantic radicals correctly and systematically referred to the phonological components for pronunciation. A significant age difference was found in all the experiments. The studies provide strong evidence that learning compound words in Chinese is not a simple matter of memorizing but involves the understanding of formal and functional constraints in the script. A possible application of these findings lies in the new direction offered for reading instruction where the non-generative, rote view of learning to read and write in Chinese can be safely abandoned. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was told when I was considering doing a Ph.D. that it is a long and lonely journey. I am glad that it is not the case for me because my supervisors, my family and my friends have made this journey a lot easier and pleasant. I would like to express my most sincere thanks to Professor Terezinha Nunes. She is a superb supervisor. She is kind, considerate, inspiring and intelligent. She understands her students and always offers just the right kind of stretch to push her students to progress further. To me, she is Socrates, as she nourishes my mind and guides me to enter the fascinating world of knowledge. I would also like to thank Ms Angela Hobsbaum for her comments on my work and encouragement. My family has been very supportive. They look after me when I am in Hong Kong, and take care of my flat when I am in London. Although my parents do not understand what a thesis is, they are always there to share my joy and distress. I do not think I can finish my study without the valuable assistance from my friends. Maria, Hester, and Josephine helped me to collect the data for the pilot study. Maria inspired my interest in children's writing and all these years has been encouraging me to persist in my work. Samuel made a series of interesting pictures for me and they were very useful in stimulating children to read and write in this study. Gwenda sacrificed her Easter Holiday to read my final draft, and Simon helped me to do the final editing of tables and figures. It is a gift from God that I can meet the fellow research students, Milita, Miriam and Ursula in spite of my short stay in London every year. From time to time, we spent hours for tea, to discuss our work and to share our doubts. When I look back, those are the most memorable moments in my Ph.D. pursuit. What joy it is to be able to build up acquaintances even at this critical period of our life. I would like to thank the principals and teachers of Caritas Kindergarten, TWGHS Kwan Kai Ming Primary School and TWGHS Sin Chu Wan Primary School for allowing me to conduct my study at short notices. Many teachers provided every possible assistance to allow me to conduct the experiments smoothly. They also shared with me valuable experiences in the teaching of Chinese. Last, but not the least, I would like to thank the children who participated in this study. They were very co-operative, and shared with me their knowledge of written Chinese. I enjoyed every minute of the process of the data collection because of their active involvement. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 LIST OF TABLES 11 LIST OF FIGURES 13 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 14 CHAPTER 2 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE 20 2.1 Introduction 20 2.2 Spoken Chinese 20 2.3 Written Chinese 22 2.3.1 Six rules for word formation 22 2.3.2 Orthographic units of written Chinese 25 2.3.2.1 A stroke 25 2.3.2.2 A stroke-pattern 26 2.3.2.3 A character 29 2.3.2.4 A word 31 2.3.2.5 A sentence 32 2.3.3 Orthographic constituents of a ideophonetic compound word 32 2.3.3.1 The semantic radical 33 2.3.3.2 The phonological component 36 2.3.3.2.1 The Orthography-Phonology Correspondence Rules 38 2.3.3.2.2 Phonological regularity of the Chinese orthography 39 2.3.4 Summary 41 CHAPTER 3 SKILLS OF FLUENT CHINESE READERS 3.1 Introduction 43 3.2 Methodological issues 44 3.3 Phonological aspects of reading Chinese 46 3.3.1 Holistic approach 46 3.3.2 Analytical approach 52 5 3.4 Orthographic aspects of reading Chinese 56 3.4.1 Holistic approach 57 3.4.2 Analytical approach 60 3.5 Semantic aspects of reading Chinese 69 3.5.1 Holistic approach 69 3.5.2 Analytical approach 69 3.6 Conclusion on skills of fluent Chinese readers 74 3.7 Using analytical approach to investigate the processing of orthographic, semantic and phonological information in reading Chinese 75 3.7.1 Flores d'Arcais' (1992, 1995) studies 75 3.7.2 Chen's (1993, 1995) studies 77 3.7.2.1 The orthographic unit of Chinese words - the smallest stroke- pattern 78 3.7.2.2 Two functionally distinct orthographic constituents of compound words : the semantic radical and the phonological component 80 3.7.2.3 Orthographic-phonology correspondence rules : Derivation and Analogy 84 3.7.2.4 Conclusion on Chen's (1993, 1995) studies 86 CHAPTER 4 CHILDREN LEARNING TO READ CHINESE 4.1 Introduction 88 4.2 The pedagogic perspective on teaching written Chinese 88 4.2.1 Reading difficulties of Chinese children 88 4.2.2 Methods of teaching Chinese 90 4.3 Literacy development at pre-reading stage 91 4.3.1 Orthographic aspects of written Chinese 92 4.3.1.1 Developmental stages in understanding the orthographic structure of written Chinese 92 4.3.1.2 Developing global visual skills in reading Chinese 96 4.3.2 Phonological aspects of written Chinese 98 4.3.2.1 Developing one-to-one correspondence between a syllable and a character 98 4.3.2.2 Developing global phonological skills in reading Chinese 100 4.3.2.3 Applying Orthographic-Phonology Correspondence (OPC) rules in reading Chinese 101 4.3.3 Semantic aspects of written Chinese 103 4.3.3.1 Understanding that print conveys meaning 103 4.3.4 Conclusion 105 6 4.4 Literacy development at the formal reading stage 106 4.4.1 Orthographic aspects of written Chinese 106 4.4.1 .1 Developing global visual skills in reading Chinese 106 4.4.2 Phonological aspects of written Chinese 112 4.4.2.1 Developing global phonological skills in reading Chinese 112 4.4.2.2 Applying Orthographic-Phonology Correspondence (OPC) rules in reading Chinese 115 4.4.3 Semantic aspects of written Chinese 118 4.4.3.1 Semantic understanding of words 118 4.4.3.2 Detecting semantic radicals 118 4.5 Conclusion 119 4.5.1 Orthographic aspects of written Chinese 119 4.5.2 Phonological aspects of written Chinese 120 4.5.3 Semantic aspects of written Chinese 122 CHAPTER 5 METHOD OF STUDY 5.1 Rationale of the study 123 5.2 Setting up the experiments 126 5.2.1 Procedure 128 5.3 The Subjects 129 5.3.1 Sample for the pilot Study 129 5.3.2 Sample for the main study 129 5.3.3 Educational background of the subjects 130 CHAPTER 6 STUDY 1: VISUAL DISCRIMINATION OF CHINESE WORDS 6.1 The Pilot Study 132 6.1.1 What are the units of visual discrimination in Chinese? 132 6.1.2 Subjects 133 6.1.3 Design 133 6.1.4 Materials 134 6.1.5 Procedure 135 6.1.6 Results 136 6.1.6.1 Stroke-complexity 136 6.1.6.2 Unit-complexity 137 6.1.7 Conclusion 138 7 6.2 The Main Study 140 6.2.1 Difficulty of visual discrimination: number of strokes versus number of stroke-patterns 140 6.2.2 Subjects 140 6.2.3 Design 140 6.2.4 Materials 142 6.2.5 Procedure 142 6.2.6 Results 143 6.2.6.1 Stroke-complexity in the same pairs 143 6.2.6.2 Unit-complexity in the different pairs 144 6.2.7 Conclusion 146 CHAPTER 7 STUDY 2: ORTHOGRAPHIC ACCEPTABILITY OF PSEUDO WORDS AND NONWORDS 7.1 The Pilot Study 148 7.1 .1 The formal constraints of written Chinese - the positioning of stroke- patterns 148 7.1.2 Subjects 150 7.1.3 Design 150 7.1.4 Materials 151 7.1.5 Procedure 151 7.1.6 Results 151 7.1.7 Discussion 152 7.2 The Main Study 153 7.2.1 The formal constraints of written Chinese