AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF CHINESE CHARACTERS WRITTEN BY BEGINNING

LEARNERS OF CHINESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

A RESEARCH PAPER

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS

BY

SARAH KITTERMAN

DR. MEGUMI HAMADA – ADVISOR

BALL STATE UNIVERSITY

MUNCIE, IN

JULY, 2012

INTRODUCTION

Second language acquisition is the process of learning a language other than one’s

native, or first, language. This includes all that is involved in learning another language:

reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, etc. Learning to read and write in a

second language involves metalinguistic knowledge - the ability for an individual to parse

a language into different categories, such as words, parts of speech (nouns, verbs,

prepositions, etc.), all the way down to the awareness of phonemes (Koda, 2004) (the

sounds that are used in a language to build words). To read and write in any language,

the learner must be aware of how the language is parceled into smaller components that

are represented by text (Koda, 2004).

Mandarin Chinese (here on out referred to as “Chinese”) is the language that has

the most native speakers and total speakers in the world (Ethnologue, 2012). Enrollment

in courses for Chinese as a foreign language has been growing at a rapid pace in the

United States over the past few decades, growing 74% between 1980 and 1990 (Abbott &

Wilcox, 2009; Arrow, 2004). More recently, it has experienced a 30% growth of

enrollment between 2002 and 2006 (Ke & Li, 2011). With such a rapid growth in interest

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and enrollment in Chinese as a second language, research dealing with how methods for

learning and teaching Chinese to native speakers of English as well as quantitatively

looking at areas of good and poor performance among the same group is surprisingly

hard to come by. Students eager to enroll in these courses, however, may not realize the

arduous learning process that lies before them, and their teachers may not be as prepared

as they could be to teach effectively because of the limited, but growing, number of

studies for English speakers of Chinese as a foreign language.

Learning to read and write in Chinese as a second language requires different

types of metalinguistic awareness than English (Koda, 2004). Chinese characters (the

units which make up the writing system of Chinese) cannot be broken down past the

syllable level, whereas the English writing system can be deconstructed to individual

phonemes (Koda, 2004). Additionally, each Chinese character represents a syllable and a

morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit of a word; for instance, “cats” is made of two

morphemes – “cat” and the suffix “s” that denotes plurality). Going from English, where

each letter or group of letters represents an individual sound, to Chinese, where each

symbol could represent an entire word, requires changing one’s understanding of how

spoken language can be represented in text.

Unlike English, with its 24 letters that can be combined to form various sounds

and words, Chinese has thousands of characters, each with their own unique meanings.

This means that to even read a newspaper in Chinese, an individual would have to learn

at least 3,000 characters (Arrow, 2004; Ho, Ng, & Ng, 2003; Su, 2010) and an even

higher number of combinations of these characters.

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Most studies regarding learning the Chinese writing system deal with reading and

the various strategies students use to accomplish this intimidating task (Arrow, 2004;

Everson, 1998; Grainger, 2005; Ke & Li, 2011; Kubota & Toyoda, 2001; Mori, 1998; Su,

2010). While much of what these studies have found can be applied to how students

tackle the issue of learning to write Chinese characters, research dealing solely with

writing characters is relatively scant (Guan, Liu, Chan, Ye, & Perfetti, 2011; Su, 2010).

However, it should be kept in mind that the relationship between learning to read

and learning to write is close. This can be seen from previous studies of ways that native

speakers of languages with alphabets have gone about learning Chinese as well as native

speakers of Chinese. For native speakers of Chinese, being able to write novel characters

strengthens the ability of the learner to remember it and recognize it later when reading

(Chan, Ho, Tsang, & Chung, 2006; Guan, et al., 2011; Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, &

Siok, 2005). Brain scans of native speakers have shown that word recognition while

reading also activates areas of the brain associated with writing (Guan, et al., 2011; Siok,

Niu, Jin, Perfetti, & Tan, 2008).

For non-native learners of Chinese, the combination of reading and writing new

characters was more beneficial to remembering characters than simply reading alone

(Guan, et al., 2011). The inclusion of pinyin (the standardized method to write Chinese

in the Latin alphabet) with the characters helped such learners even more (Guan, et al.,

2011). Including stroke-by-stroke instruction of how to write Chinese characters was

found to be even more beneficial (Guan, et al., 2011). Other studies have shown that the

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more often a character occurs, the more likely learners will be able to write it correctly

(Ke, 1996; McEwen, 2006).

Multiple studies have been done on only reading and recognizing Chinese

characters; few have been on learning to write Chinese characters. Those that have been

done have shown a clear relationship between learning to read and write Chinese

characters, but the emphasis of research is still on reading recognition rather than

character writing. This study aims to add more to this little-researched aspect of learning

Chinese as a foreign language through an error analysis of characters written by first

semester college students of Chinese. The significance of this study for the field of

second language acquisition is that it looks at something other than English as a second

language (which is very well researched) and gives insight into how learners adjust when

moving from an alphabet to Chinese characters. The significance to pedagogy is that this

study, and later studies, will help those teaching Chinese as a second language teach

characters more effectively, further helping students produce and read written Chinese.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Background Research on Second Language Reading and Writing

With the growing interest among the student populace in learning Chinese as a

foreign language, researchers have been turning their attention to finding how native and

non-native speakers learn Chinese. More studies are being done, more textbooks are

being published for Chinese foreign language instruction, and more societies for people

teaching or learning Chinese are being established across the United States, much of

these being funded by the governments of the United States, China, and Taiwan (Ke & Li,

2011). For this study, research done with reading (especially word recognition) and

writing (of characters, not composition) will be considered. The two fields of research

are related in that they use the same linguistic information and much of the same

cognitive functions. The linguistic information involved is a spoken language and its

assigned writing system. The shared cognitive processing is in the transfer of graphic

information to the spoken language for reading and vice versa for writing. Studies have

also shown that writing and reading are very intertwined in Chinese among native and

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non-native speakers, as discussed above (Chan, et al., 2006; Guan, et al., 2011; Ke, 1996;

McEwen, 2006; Siok, et al., 2008; Su, 2010; Tan, et al., 2005).

Learning to read and write a language is not like learning to listen or speak a

language; the latter is a natural process that is innate to the human species, but the former

requires years of dissection and instruction to master (Schau, 2000). There are believed

to be two levels of components to reading higher level processing and lower level

processing (Schau, 2000). Higher level processing entails content knowledge (where the

reader already knows about the topic he or she is reading) or contextual assistance (where

the reader uses the information from the text itself to gain more information about

specific words or phrases) (Schau, 2000). Lower level processing entails gaining

meaning from the bits and pieces that make up words and phrases; that is, letters and

words are the primary source of getting meaningful information from a text (Schau,

2000).

For example, when reading a children’s book, most adults would employ higher

level processing as there would be no new words and the stories are probably already

familiar to them. Reading something more difficult, like the inner workings of a potential

quantum computer, would be exceedingly difficult for the layperson who would need to

rely on having to sound out individual words that were novel; that is, lower level

processing would be more important here. Having these two levels work together

involves using higher level processing for most of what is being read, but using lower

level processing to understand new or unexpected material in the text (Schau, 2000).

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Learning to read often works from lower processing skills up (Schau, 2000); that

is, learning what the smallest meaningful written symbol that is relevant to spoken

language is and building larger pieces of the language from there. This lower level

processing is key to being a good reader; being able to automatically process this visual

information leaves room for cognitive processing of the larger picture (Schau, 2000).

The less work an individual needs to do with these lower level processes, the easier it is

to read a given text and think about the big picture of what the text describes. Writing

works in the same direction. People learn their native language’s writing system from the

smallest meaningful written symbols (i.e. letters in an alphabet), work their way up to

small words, then larger words, then sentences, etc. While it may not be as dramatic as

with reading, high level processing skills can take over writing after the lower level

processes have become automated; this can be seen in students writing class notes while

looking at the professor and not their notebook or being able to spell most words without

thinking about it and instead focusing on what words or sentences will be written next.

While learning to speak and listen in a second language may be more difficult

than learning to speak or listen in one’s native language, it is believed that learning to

read and write in a second language is even more arduous (Schau, 2000). When learning

to read and write in one’s native language, there is already a phonological foundation on

which to build the written language; this foundation rarely exists for individuals learning

to read and write in a second language (Guan, et al., 2011). Additionally, although

learning to read and write in a second language is difficult for second language learners

who are skilled readers in their first language, it is even more difficult for individuals

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who are poor readers and writers in their native language (Arrow, 2004). This is because

learners of a second language will use their prior knowledge of how sounds and

orthography (the writing system for a language) are connected (Guan, et al., 2011; Su,

2010). If this prior knowledge is lacking in any way, it will be detrimental to their

understanding of the connection in a second language.

While higher level processes are at work regardless of language (that is, the reader

will attempt to use previous knowledge and context to help tackle a difficult text whether

it is in their native language or in a second language), lower level processes impede

successful reading if the orthography of a second language is different from the first

language (Schau, 2000; Su, 2010). If the orthography is different between the two

languages, the learner would have to find new ways to process the second orthography

(Chung, 2008; Kubota, 2005; Schau, 2000; Su, 2010). For example, native speakers of

languages with an alphabetic writing system process morphosyllabic or logographic (a

writing system that is only meaning-based and has no relation to sound) symbols

differently than native speakers with a morphosyllabic or logographic writing system

(Kubota, 2005).

The above information pertains to writing Chinese characters, and not just reading

them, because both levels of processing reading (lower and higher) and the relation

between the two deal with writing as well. For example, for the higher level processing,

at times, collocations may help individuals remember characters he or she may not have

remembered if the characters were alone. For the lower level processing, simply

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remembering one radical (a piece that makes up a character) within a character may be

enough to recall the rest of the character.

This is because visual processing of a written language depends upon the type of

orthography that is used (Schau, 2000). The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (Katz &

Frost, 1992; Su, 2010) makes this clearer. There are different levels of “depth” into

which an orthographic system can be categorized. The closer that each written symbol is

to the phoneme it represents, and the more transparent this relationship is, the “shallower”

it is said to be (Katz & Frost, 1992; Schau, 2000; Su, 2010). Thus, languages like

Spanish or Italian are considered to be shallow orthographies. English is considered a

deep orthography because, while its alphabet sometimes follows the phonology (the

mental representation of sounds) of the language, it often diverges (take the

pronunciation of the vowel /a/ in the words “have” and “save,” for example). Different

orthographic depths require different reading and writing strategies (Su, 2010); for

instance, deeper languages use more visual strategies while shallower languages use more

phonological strategies to remember how words are written (Su, 2010).

Chinese has an even deeper orthography than English (Guan, et al., 2011). Due to

the nature of Chinese characters (which will be discussed below), there are minimal clues

to how a given character sounds and each character represents a morpheme and possibly

an entire word. It can be very difficult to discern how an unknown character sounds or

what it may mean (Cheung, Chan, & Chong, 2007; Schau, 2000; Shu & Anderson, 1997;

Su, 2010).

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Another factor at play in second language acquisition is that of first language

transfer. Language transfer is where an individual learning another language takes his or

her knowledge of his or her previously learned language(s) and applies it to the second

language (Winford, 2003). This process can be conscious or subconscious. The positive

result of language transfer allows the learner to more easily acquire rules and words of

the second language, most often when the two languages have commonalities. The

negative result of language transfer, or interference, is when the learner’s acquisition of a

second language is impeded due to the second language being different from the first

(Brown, 2007). It is often expected that these transfers, whether negative or positive, are

the result of the learner using his or her knowledge of the native language to face

challenges in acquiring the second language (Jarvis & Odlin, 2000; Winford, 2003).

While English is not considered a shallow language according to the orthographic

depth hypothesis (Katz & Frost, 1992), it does conform to some phonological rules. With

this in mind, individuals learning Chinese may expect the same type of relationship

between the spoken and written language that English has, which could end in a

misunderstanding of how writing (and reading) Chinese is supposed to work. Even if the

learner is able to grasp that each character represents a syllable, the knowledge that every

syllable in Chinese has its own morphemic meaning may take a considerable amount of

time to comprehend due to negative transfer from English, the morphemes of which

regularly consist of two or more syllables.

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The Chinese Writing System

Chinese is the oldest continually written orthography in existence, spanning a

history of over 4,000 years (Arrow, 2004). Beginning as pictographs, or pictures, of what

they were representing, Chinese characters evolved over time to what we have today

(Arrow, 2004). While it is easy to discern the pictographic roots of some characters (i.e.

女(nǚ) for “woman”), most characters have become quite abstract and the reader must

rely more on pieces that make up a character, called radicals, to discern their meanings.

While Chinese is often described as logographic, this term is incorrectly applied (Su,

2010). Only around 10% of characters are strictly semantic (meaning-based) (Ho, Ng, et

al., 2003), which is why the term “morphosyllabic,” meaning the orthography represents

morphemes and syllables, is a term which is growing in popularity to describe the

Chinese writing system (Guan, et al., 2011; Su, 2010).

Unlike English, Chinese is a tonal language, which means that the tone in which a

word is said can change the meaning of the word. For instance, 妈, pronounced mā, has a

high steady tone and means “mother.” 麻, pronounced má, has a rising tone and is a

generic term for hemp or flax. 马, pronounced mǎ, has a falling and then rising tone and

means “horse.” 骂, pronounced mà, has a falling tone and means “to scold” or “to abuse.”

吗, pronounced ma, has no tone and is used at the end of a question as a kind of verbal

question mark.

Another difference from English is the number of allowed syllable structures.

English has a very complicated syllable structure system while Chinese has a very simple

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one. The only allowed syllable structures in Chinese are V (vowel), VV (diphthong), CV

(consonant-vowel), CVV (consonant-diphthong), VC (vowel-consonant), and CVC

(consonant-vowel-consonant) (Su, 2010). The last of these structures can only be ended

by the consonants n, ŋ, and ɻ. Furthermore, each syllable is a morpheme or a word. This

leads to numerous homophones present in Chinese, even with the various tones (there are

only around 1,200 unique syllables in Chinese with tones incorporated) (Ho, 1989; Koda,

2004). Such homophones can be confusing to native speakers and learners of Chinese,

both in listening and writing.

Each character in Chinese represents a syllable as well as a morpheme (Ho, Ng, et

al., 2003; Koda, 2004; P. D. Liu, Chung, McBride-Chang, & Tong, 2010; Shu &

Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010). Because of this, the ability for an individual to be fluent in

reading and writing Chinese requires that he or she knows over 3,000 characters (Arrow,

2004; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Koda, 2004; Su, 2010). As with any writing system, this

requires the individual to know the pronunciation, the shape (what it looks like or how it

is written), and the meaning (Allen, 1992; Arrow, 2004; Chung, 2008) of each character.

Each Chinese character is composed of one or more radicals (Allen, 1992; Koda,

2004), which are the smallest meaningful unit in a Chinese character (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003;

Shen & Ke, 2007; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010). Characters that are only made of

one radical, or simple characters (Koda, 2004; Su, 2010), make up around 10%-20% of

all Chinese characters (Everson, 1998; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; P. D. Liu, et al., 2010).

Characters that have two or more characters are called compound characters; around

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80%-90% of Chinese characters fall into this category (Everson, 1998; Ho, 1989; Ho, Ng,

et al., 2003; Koda, 2004; Su, 2010).

These radicals are classified into two categories: semantic and phonetic (Allen,

1992; Ho, 1989; Koda, 2004; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010). Semantic radicals

generally give the meaning or semantic category of a character and are most often found

on the left or top of a character (Allen, 1992; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Koda, 2004; P. D. Liu,

et al., 2010; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010). There are around 200 semantic radicals

in Chinese (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Su, 2010). Phonetic radicals give phonological clues to

how a character is pronounced and are often found on the right or bottom of characters

(Allen, 1992; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Su, 2010). There are 800 to 1,200 phonetic radicals in

Chinese (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Koda, 2004; Su, 2010).

Semantic radicals tend to be more transparent in their meanings than phonetic

radicals are in their phonological clues (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Su, 2010). A reader may

know either kind of radical directly or through knowing their functions from other

characters (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Ho, Wong, & Chan, 1999). Even with such inference,

the accuracy of a prediction of a character’s sound based on its phonetic radical is only

around 40% (Ho, 1989; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Koda, 2004), which drops even lower, to

24%, if tone is taken into consideration (Everson, 1998; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003). Moreover,

the more frequently a character occurs, the less likely it is that the phonetic radical will

correspond with the sound of the character or that the semantic radical will be related to

the character’s semantic category (Everson, 1998). Some radicals take multiple shapes

that are only found in certain parts of a character (for example, 心 (xīn), the heart radical,

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which is semantic, is only found on the bottom of a character, while its other form 忄 is

only found on the left side of a character) (Allen, 1992). Additionally, many phonetic

radicals can stand alone as a complete character, but semantic radicals usually cannot (Su,

2010).

These radicals are further divided into strokes, which is a line, curve, or angle that

is written without lifting the pen or brush from the paper (Ho, 1989). There are eight or

24 basic strokes that make up radicals, depending on how they are being counted (on the

upper end of the number of strokes, some of these can be further divided into smaller

stroke combinations, leading to the smaller count) (Guan, et al., 2011; Su, 2010). Both

strokes and radicals have very strict rules regarding the direction and order in which they

are written (Allen, 1992; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; P. D. Liu, et al., 2010). The order for

radicals is usually left to right and top to bottom (Allen, 1992).

Levels of Orthographic Awareness for Those Learning the Chinese Writing

System

As learners go through their courses or levels of self-teaching, they go through

three levels of orthographic awareness (Ke & Li, 2011; Su, 2010). The first level is pre-

component processing. During this stage, entire characters are added to the learner’s

lexicon without a lot of processing (Allen, 1992); the learner will likely be able to notice

that there are radicals, but with such a small vocabulary and a large number of radicals,

they do not have the means to notice patterns of what these radicals may mean, sound

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like, or certain positional constraints, all of which are very important for remembering

characters (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Ke & Li, 2011; Shen & Ke, 2007; Su, 2010). Thus,

written errors found early in the first level or orthographic awareness involve writing

general shapes that look similar to the target character.

Those more advanced in this level may be able to start discerning what semantic

category a new character belongs to based on its semantic radical, but would not be able

to guess a new character’s pronunciation (Allen, 1992; Ke & Li, 2011; Shu & Anderson,

1997; Su, 2010). They also start to be able to recognize illegal radicals and legal radicals

in illegal positions when more advanced in the first level of orthographic awareness (Su,

2010; Wang, Liu, & Perfetti, 2004; Wang, Perfetti, & Liu, 2003). At this point, written

errors would be expected to be with only one radical within a compound character.

During this level, characters learned near the beginning and end of a course will

more likely be remembered than those taught in the middle of the course (Ke & Li, 2011).

The fewer strokes a character has, the more likely it will be written correctly, and the

errors that learners in this level make will not be the same types of errors that native

speakers of Chinese make (Ke & Li, 2011). While many learners rapidly learn Chinese

in their first year or two of study, it still takes most learners knowledge of over 3,000

characters (about three years of classroom study) to continue to the next stage according

to some research (Ke & Li, 2011; Shen & Ke, 2007).

The second stage of orthographic awareness is the component processing stage

(Ke & Li, 2011; Su, 2010). At this point, the learner is able to apply their understanding

of how Chinese characters are constructed to identify and name known characters and

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guess the meanings of and sound of simple, transparent novel characters (Ke & Li, 2011;

Shen & Ke, 2007; Su, 2010). Many characters have found their ways into the learner’s

long-term memory, especially characters and radicals that are transparent in meaning or

sound and which frequently occur (Ke & Li, 2011; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010). At

this stage, learners are able to notice and correct errors in others’ writings and his or her

own (Kubota, 2005). Reaching the second stage may take anywhere from six months to

two years according to some research (Su, 2010). Written errors at this stage would

likely include new, complex, and/or rare characters missing strokes.

The third stage of orthographic awareness is the automatic component processing

stage (Ke & Li, 2011; Su, 2010). At this point in their learning, students have a native-

like awareness of the Chinese writing system and are able to recognize and produce

characters based on frequent components, as well as radicals that do not strictly belong to

phonetic or semantic radicals (Ke & Li, 2011). They are able to make good guesses on

the meanings and pronunciations of unfamiliar characters, have good judgment on the

legality of pseudocharacters (characters that have follow legal placement of radicals but

are not real characters), and most errors made in writing characters are phonological,

which is also the most common type of error made by native speakers (Ke & Li, 2011)..

Learning to Read and Write in Chinese

As stated before, reading and writing are related due to their shared characteristics.

Firstly, they are unnatural; that is, speaking and listening to a language is innate to human

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beings, but reading and writing must be consciously learned. Secondly, they share the

same cognitive processes, as they both deal with the transfer of information between the

spoken language and its writing system. Reading involves this information goes from the

page to the spoken language, while writing goes from the spoken language to the page.

They both involve the abstract process of transforming aural information into a physical

representation that others can understand. Due to their related nature and scarce research

into learning to write Chinese as a second language, studies involving both learning to

read and write in Chinese will be considered. These studies deal with learners of Chinese

as a second language unless otherwise stated.

Chinese as a foreign language instructors are taking various studies on how

learners acquire Chinese into consideration. For instance, by using knowledge gained

from studies on how people learn a second language, more foreign language classrooms

are shifting from being teacher-centered to learner-centered (Arrow, 2004). A common

way of teaching Chinese characters is to divide new characters into their radical

components and showing how they fit together (Kubota, 2005). Indeed, teaching radicals

to students has been found to be beneficial, as it is important for word and character

recognition (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Shu & Anderson, 1997).

While semantic processing is the dominant process in reading Chinese characters

(Schau, 2000; Su, 2010), phonological processing (connecting the written symbols on a

page to the phonology, or sounds, of a language) still plays an important role in

recognizing and understanding characters (Schau, 2000). Phonological processing is key

because it accesses short-term memory, which is necessary for remembering what was

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read earlier in a sentence to be able to piece the whole sentence together or to help

remember a new character (Schau, 2000). Studies with English learners of Japanese as a

second language regarding Japanese Kanji (which are or are based on Chinese characters)

have shown that participants remembered pseudocharacters better if there was a phonetic

radical (Mori, 1998; Schau, 2000).

However, most of the focus from teachers is on the semantic radical, leaving

learners to discover the sounds of phonetic radicals on their own (Everson, 1998; Su,

2010). This is exceedingly difficult for students not only because phonetic radicals are

less transparent than semantic radicals, but also because many characters taught early on

in a Chinese language classroom have irregular phonetic radicals (Su, 2010), making it

even more challenging to find any kind of phonetic patterns. While teachers are

becoming more aware of how people learn a second language successfully, learners are

still mostly unaware of what may be more beneficial to them (Arrow, 2004). This often

leads to students becoming frustrated with the language and dropping out of courses

(Grainger, 2005; Su, 2010) and quickly forgetting what they had learned (Grainger, 2005).

There are many things that students should be aware of to help them in their

journey to fluency in a second language. For instance, it has been found that good

language learners use more learning strategies than poor language learners (Arrow, 2004;

Butler, 2011). Learning strategies that learners use to make predictions about the sounds

and meanings of unknown words are through intralingual inference (using knowledge

from the second language), interlingual inference (applying knowledge from one

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language to another), and through extralingual inference (applying knowledge from the

outside world) (Arrow, 2004).

Ways that Chinese as a second language learners use to remember Chinese

characters can be quite varied, and many will develop or use ways they find most useful

to them (Su, 2010). This is certainly tied to how each student approaches Chinese and

what they find the most difficult about characters. Many students use flashcards with the

character, meaning, and pinyin (the way Chinese is transcribed in the Roman alphabet) or

among other methods of memorization (Arrow, 2004; Everson, 1998; Grainger, 2005),

most likely due to students finding the shape of a character the most difficult aspect

(Arrow, 2004). Other methods for remembering how to write a character were repetition

of writing a given character multiple times (Arrow, 2004; Everson, 1998; Grainger, 2005;

Ke & Li, 2011; Kubota & Toyoda, 2001), creating mnemonic devices about how the

character looked (usually this is done by using the radicals in a character; for example, to

remember the character 好 (hǎo) “good,” one can divide the radicals and say that a

woman (女) with her child (子) is a good thing) (Everson, 1998; Ke & Li, 2011; Kubota

& Toyoda, 2001), or by associating a new character with characters already known

(Grainger, 2005).

Another method learners use builds on what many classrooms do, which is

dividing the character into its radicals and remembering them and how they fit together

(Grainger, 2005; Ke & Li, 2011; Kubota & Toyoda, 2001; Su, 2010), although students

tend to prefer rote memorization of characters over this method after a year of study (Ke

& Li, 2011). In a study by Kubota and Toyoda (2001), it was found that students who

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divided characters into their radical components did a better job on a short-term memory

writing task than those who used repetitious writing of a character.

For those who found remembering the sound of a character to be difficult, reading

texts aloud, using sound correspondences with their native language (i.e. one participant

remembered 东 (dōng), “east,” by the sun rising in the east and an alarm clock goes

“dong” around sunrise) (Everson, 1998; Ke & Li, 2011; Kubota & Toyoda, 2001), and

color coding tones was thought to be beneficial to them (Arrow, 2004). Focusing on

remembering phonetic radicals may be beneficial to those who find remembering the

sounds of characters difficult, as it has been found that those with an alphabetic native

language already, and often involuntarily, search for phonetic clues in Chinese characters

(Kubota & Toyoda, 2001; Mori, 1998).

As for remembering the meanings of characters, students found self-made

vocabulary dictionaries and saying their native language equivalent while looking at the

character to be helpful (Arrow, 2004). While some participants of Arrow’s (2004) study

claimed that reading authentic materials was helpful, other papers (Grainger, 2005) have

shown that using authentic materials for learning Chinese is exceedingly difficult. The

reason for this is that Chinese is classified as a category four language, which means that

it takes three times as long to achieve second language fluency than learning a category

one language like Spanish or French (Grainger, 2005; Su, 2010).

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Character Errors in Learning Chinese

Errors are very common in learning any second language, but errors by those

learning to write Chinese characters are different than those by learners of syllabic or

alphabetic languages. According to Kubota (2005), common errors in writing include:

confusion with characters that are morphologically similar to other characters, misshapen

radicals (Ishida, 2000), strokes that are written in an incorrect direction, strokes that are

too long or too short, confusion with homonymous characters (Ishida, 2000; Su, 2010),

and missing one or more characters in a multi-character word. Among language learners

with an alphabetic or syllabic native language orthography, the most common errors are

writing strokes in the wrong direction and with stroke length (Kubota, 2005). Other

studies have found that using incorrect radicals or omitting strokes was another common

error among learners of Chinese as a foreign language (Hatta, Kawakami, & Tamaoka,

1998; Su, 2010).

Such errors come about because learners of Chinese as a second language have a

higher cognitive load than learners of, for example, an alphabetic language. All aspects

of a character - sound, meaning, and shape - must be learned immediately and

remembered for the long term (Chung, 2008; Guan, et al., 2011; Perfetti, Liu, & Tan,

2005; Taft, Zhu, & Peng, 1999; Wang, et al., 2003). This results from the typical way

that characters are presented in classrooms and textbooks. Multiple characters are

presented at once, each with what they look like, what they mean, and how they sound

(Chung, 2008; Everson, 1998). With all of these presented at the same time, learners

22

often involuntarily sacrifice two of the attributes of a character to only remember one due

to such a high cognitive load (Chung, 2008).

Ways to decrease some of this cognitive load have been found by some students

learning Chinese. For example, students who practice characters in the context of other

characters, whether it be to make words or within a sentence, were shown to be more

effective at writing characters correctly than practicing characters individually (Ke & Li,

2011). Also, the more often a character occurs in Chinese, the less likely errors will be

made in writing (Ke, 1996; Ke & Li, 2011). It should be kept in mind, however, that

one’s fluency in speaking or listening in Chinese will not help him or her significantly in

writing or reading Chinese due to the nature of the characters. Part of the reason for this

is that phonetic radicals are more numerous than semantic radicals and are generally less

transparent than semantic radicals (Ke & Li, 2011).

Another important factor is that learning Chinese characters can be so arduous for

native speakers of English because of the orthographic differences between the two

languages. Studies have shown that learners of a second language with a morphosyllabic

or logographic writing system have a harder time learning the script if they come from a

native language with an alphabetic orthography rather than a native language of a

logographic or morphosyllabic orthography (Chikamatsu, 1996; Grainger, 2005; Hatta, et

al., 1998; Hatta, Kawakami, & Tamaoka, 2002; Schau, 2000). In other words, if

someone whose native language is English is learning Chinese, it would be more difficult

and take more time to learn the script than for a native speaker of Japanese.

23

At all levels of fluency, it appears that there are several important factors to keep

in mind for students who are learning Chinese as a second language. First is that

successful learners use several learning strategies (Arrow, 2004; Butler, 2011). Second is

that radical awareness leads to better reading and better written characters than

remembering characters as a whole (Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su,

2010). Third, it should be remembered that Chinese takes a very long time and a lot of

practice to become fluent, especially compared to other languages (Chung, 2008;

Grainger, 2005; Ke, Wen, & Kotenbeutel, 2001; Schau, 2000; Su, 2010), so if the

Chinese class seems to be moving more slowly than a Spanish class, there is no need for

concern or to drop the course out of frustration.

In summary, it is expected that beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign

language will make several character errors because of their low level of orthographic

awareness (Allen, 1992; Su, 2010) and due to a high cognitive load given to them based

on the presentation of novel characters from their textbooks (Chung, 2008; Y. Liu, Yao,

et al., 2009a). Learners’ errors are predominately found within a character rather than

through the confusion with other characters, as they do not have a large enough lexicon to

confuse characters based on meaning or homophones (Allen, 1992; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003;

Ke & Li, 2011; Shen & Ke, 2007; Su, 2010). Learners are also expected to perform

poorly in stroke order because, at this level in their orthographic awareness, characters

are remembered as a whole or as their radicals, but not through the smallest constituents

(Allen, 1992; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Ke & Li, 2011; Shen & Ke, 2007; Su, 2010).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Most studies done with Chinese as a foreign language learners has been done on

character recognition in reading; little to no research has been done on how students learn

and how students produce Chinese characters. For my study, I have the following

questions about first semester students of Chinese as a foreign language, the answers to

which I hope will shine more light on this inadequately researched area of second

language acquisition:

1) Will learners at such an early stage of orthographic awareness make errors

predominately with semantic radicals, phonetic radicals, or will there be no

difference? It could be assumed that semantic radicals would have fewer

errors because they are more transparent and fewer in number than phonetic

radicals (Everson, 1998; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Ke & Li, 2011; Su, 2010). This

question, however, has not been answered for Chinese as a foreign language

students in any studies that I am aware of. The answer to this question would

25

not only provide insight into this scantly researched area, but could potentially

improve teaching methods for teachers of Chinese as a foreign language.

2) Does incorrect and/or varied stroke order have any impact on producing

semantic radicals and phonetic radicals? Again, this does not seem to be well

researched for Chinese as a foreign language learners and the answer could

have vast implications for teaching if incorrect and/or varied stroke order

leads to poorly formed or incorrect radicals of either category.

3) Does incorrect and/or varied stroke order have any impact on producing

characters overall? Once more, there seems to be little to no research

regarding this for Chinese as a foreign language learners. The implications

for teaching are even more important here; if the reason that characters are

written incorrectly is to the students’ inability to use correct stroke order,

more class time would surely need to be dedicated to teaching correct stroke

order.

METHOD

Participants

An email was sent to the professor of CH 101 at Ball State University at the end

of the Fall 2011 semester requesting she ask for participants who were native speakers of

English for my study. Five participants took part in this study. All five are Ball State

University students who were at the end of their first semester of Mandarin (CH 101) and

were taught in the same class by the same teacher. This level was selected not only to

elicit more errors (as beginning students of any foreign language will make more errors

than advanced students), but also to see how beginning learners of Chinese go about

writing a completely foreign orthography after only four months of study. All

participants are native speakers of English. Native speakers of English were wanted for

participants because they would have no native speaker intuitions about the nature of

Chinese characters.

Four participants were female and one was male. Random numbers were

assigned to each participant. Participants 34, 57, 82, and 20 had been studying Mandarin

27

(writing, reading, speaking, and listening) for four months, although participant 20 did

have some experience with Mandarin at seven years old, but she said it was very minimal

and she did not remember any of it prior to restarting learning it four months prior to this

study. Participant 82 considered Spanish to be a second language and Participant 20

considered herself to be fluent in French and at an intermediate level in German.

Participant 5 was excluded from this study due to being both left-handed and dyslexic –

both would very interesting topics to be looked into for future research.

Materials

Materials used in this study were the courses three books: the textbook, workbook,

and character workbook from the third edition of the series Integrated Chinese 中文听说

读写: Level 1 Part 1 (Y. Liu, Yao, et al., 2009a, 2009b). Specifically, Lesson 5 reading

comprehension exercise B found on page 85 of the workbook was used for one of the

writing tasks. A digital camcorder was used as well as a tripod. SPSS 19 was used for

correlation analysis. Analysis of stroke order was done with mdbg.net,

chineseetymology.org, and the character workbook from the course (Y. Liu, Yao, Bi, Ge,

et al., 2009)

28

Tasks

Two writing tasks were presented to the participants to complete. The first task

was a free writing exercise requesting information about their best friend to be written in

Chinese with additional questions to help participants think about what details they could

write about. The free writing task was given in order to allow participants the

opportunity to write characters in which they were confident and to possibly avoid those

in which they were not confident. The second exercise was a translation exercise that

was from the last chapter completed by the class in their class’s exercise workbook (Y.

Liu, Yao, et al., 2009b). The passage, Lesson 5 reading comprehension exercise B found

on page 85, was in Chinese, which I translated into English for the participants to

translate back into Chinese. This translation task was given so as to persuade participants

to attempt to write characters they may not have felt comfortable in writing, thus it would

be more likely to elicit errors.

Procedures

Seven signatures were acquired with five people coming to participate by the end

of the semester. Participants met with me individually in a quiet room on Ball State

University’s campus with few distractions. Participants were given consent forms

explaining the process of data collection when they came to participate. Participants then

read through and signed a consent form to the study. Then, questions were asked about

29

their native languages and how long they had been studying Chinese. I then gave a short

oral explanation of what they were to do for the study.

Participants were then given two writing exercises, each marked with their

participant number which was randomly assigned by a random number generator

(http://www.random.org/) with the minimum number being one and the maximum

number being 100. The two writing exercises were created and selected in order to elicit

long responses.

A digital camcorder was placed on a tripod which was placed on the opposite side

of the dominant hand of the participant and above his/her shoulder in order to record

stroke order. It was angled in such a way so as not to capture the faces of the participants.

No sound from the video was taken into consideration so as to ensure anonymity. At the

beginning of each video, a notecard containing the participant’s random number was

shown to ensure data from each participant could be matched.

After the participants were finished with their exercises, the video recording was

transferred to a password protected laptop and deleted from the camcorder. The

participants’ language histories and writing samples were scanned and stored on the same

password protected laptop with the hard copies kept in a locked desk.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

Data was coded by me through the use of the writing task and video of each

participant writing the exercises. Characters that were erased were not considered, as it

was determined by the participants to be mistakes. Analysis was done to determine if the

characters they wrote were correctly written at the entire character, semantic radical,

phonetic radical, stroke order within the semantic radical, and stroke order within the

phonetic radical levels. The time that the participant began and finished writing each

character was also recorded. Stroke order was determined through a recommended

textbook for their course (Y. Liu, Yao, Bi, Ge, et al., 2009) and through mdbg.net, an

online Chinese dictionary. Semantic radicals and phonetic radicals were determined

through chineseetymology.org, an online etymology of the history of Chinese characters.

A character was considered incorrect if it was missing a radical, used an incorrect

radical, or a radical was not written correctly (i.e. too many strokes). A radical was

considered incorrect if it was the wrong radical or was not written correctly. Stroke order

was considered incorrect if a stroke was written in the wrong direction, the order of

31

strokes was incorrect, if one stroke was separated into two or more strokes, or if two or

more strokes were combined into one stroke.

32

Table 1

Scores on Both Tests and Combined

Free Writing

Correct

Radicals (%)

Correct

Strokes (%)

Partic.

No. of

Chars.

Correct

Chars. (%) Sem. Phon. Sem. Phon. Time

Avg. Time

Per Char.

(sec)

20 67 94 98.1 93.9 22.2 26.5 14:21 12.8

34 25 68 75 77.3 12.5 9.1 8:44 20.9

57 62 85.5 98 80.9 54.9 25.5 3:40 3.5

82 69 89.9 95.8 92.3 64.6 51.9 10:01 8.7

Avg. 55.8 84.4 91.7 86.1 38.6 28.3 9:11 11.5

Translation

Correct

Radicals (%)

Correct

Strokes (%)

Partic.

No. of

Chars.

Correct

Chars. (%) Sem.

Phon

. Sem. Phon. Time

Avg. Time

Per Char.

(sec)

20 61 86.9 92.7 90.7 21.8 32.6 12:05 11.9

34 101 64.4 87.7 68.4 9.9 22.8 29:48 17.7

57 137 94.9 97.2 95.4 45.4 52.3 10:13 4.5

82 117 73.5 71.3 78.9 41.5 50.5 19:40 10.1

Avg. 104.0 79.9 87.2 83.4 29.7 39.6 17:56 11.1

Combined

Correct

Radicals (%)

Correct

Strokes (%)

Partic.

No. of

Chars.

Correct

Chars. (%) Sem.

Phon

. Sem. Phon. Time

Avg. Time

Per Char.

(sec)

20 128 90.5 95.4 92.3 22.0 29.6 26:26 12.4

34 126 66.2 81.4 72.9 11.2 16.0 38:32 19.3

57 199 90.2 97.6 88.2 50.2 38.9 13:53 4.0

82 186 81.7 83.6 85.6 53.1 51.2 29:41 9.4

Avg. 159.8 82.1 89.5 84.7 34.1 33.9 27:08 11.3

33

Table 1 shows a comparison of the number of characters, the percentages of

correct characters, radicals, and strokes, times, and average times per character for the

free writing task, the translation task, and of both tasks combined.

Table 2

Number of Radicals

Participant Semantic Radicals Phonetic Radicals

Free Writing 20 54 49

34 16 22

57 51 47

82 48 52

Total 169 170

Translation 20 55 43

34 81 79

57 108 109

82 94 95

Total 338 326

Combined 20 109 92

34 97 101

57 159 156

82 142 147

Total 507 496

Table 2 shows the number of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals per

participant and combined for the free writing task, the translation task, and the two tasks

combined.

34

Figure 1.1 gives a graph of how many characters each participant wrote for the

free writing exercise and the translation exercise, as well as the total number of characters.

Figure 1.2 gives a graph of the percentage of correct of radicals (on the surface)

each participant wrote for the free writing exercise and for the translation exercise.

0

50

100

150

200

250

20 34 57 82

No

. of

Ch

arac

ters

Participant

Figure 1.1 Number of Characters

No. of Translation Chars.

No. of Free Chars.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

20 34 57 82

% C

orr

ect

Participant

Figure 1.2 Radicals

Semantic Free

Phonetic Free

Semantic Translation

Phonetic Translation

35

Figure 1.3 gives the percentage of correct stroke order for each participant for the

free writing task and for the translation task.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

20 34 57 82

% C

orr

ect

Participant

Figure 1.3 Stroke Order

Semantic Free

Phonetic Free

Semantic Translation

Phonetic Translation

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

100.0

20 34 57 82

% C

orr

ect

Participant

Figure 1.4 Combined Scores

Correct Chars.

Semantic Radical

Phonetic Radical

Semantic Stroke

Phonetic Stroke

36

Figure 1.4 gives a graph for all of the percentages of correct characters, radicals,

and stroke orders for the free writing task and translation task combined.

Figure 1.5 shows the total numbers of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals

used by each participant in each writing task and with both tasks combined, and for all

participants in each writing task and both tasks combined.

Table 3 through Table 6 (found in Appendix A) present the data from each

participant. Each table gives every character that was written by the participant. For the

categories of correctness, a 1 represents that the character, radical, or stroke order was

correct and a 0 represents that it was not. The free writing task is presented first and the

translation task second. At the end of each of these tasks, total numbers of characters and

radicals are presented as well as the number of correct characters and radicals written by

0

100

200

300

400

500

20 34 57 82 Total

Participant

Figure 1.5 Number of Radicals

Free Semantic

Free Phonetic

Translation Semantic

Translation Phonetic

Total Semantic

Total Phonetic

37

the participant. The time it took for the participant to finish each task is also present at

the bottom of each task.

Table 3 (Appendix A) shows the results for Participant 20. In the free writing

task, Participant 20 wrote a total of 67 characters in 14 minutes and 21 seconds and 63

(94.0%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the surface; that is, as a whole rather

than through how the character was written stroke-by-stroke. Constructing these 67

characters were 54 semantic radicals and 49 phonetic radicals. Fifty three (98.1%) of the

semantic radicals were correct on the surface and 46 (93.9%) of the phonetic radicals

were correct on the surface. When analyzed for stroke order, 12 (22.2%) of the semantic

radicals were written correctly and 13 (26.5%) of the phonetic radicals were written

correctly.

For the translation task, Participant 20 wrote a total of 61 characters in 12 minutes

and five seconds and 53 (86.9%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the surface.

Constructing these 61 characters were 55 semantic radicals and 43 phonetic radicals.

Fifty one (92.7%) of the semantic radicals were correct on the surface and 39 (90.7%) of

the phonetic radicals were correct on the surface. When analyzed for stroke order, 12

(21.8%) of the semantic radicals were written correctly and 14 (32.6%) of the phonetic

radicals were written correctly. The total time to finish both tasks was 26 minutes and 26

seconds.

Table 4 (Appendix A) shows the results for Participant 82. In the free writing

task, Participant 82 wrote 69 characters in ten minutes and one second and 62 (89.9%) of

the characters appeared to be correct on the surface. Constructing these characters were

38

48 semantic radicals and 52 phonetic radicals. Forty six (95.8%) of the semantic radicals

appeared to be correct on the surface and 48 (92.3%) of the phonetic radicals appeared to

be correct on the surface. When analyzed for stroke order, 31 (64.6%) of the semantic

radicals were written correctly and 27 (51.9%) of the phonetic radicals were written

correctly.

For the translation task, Participant 82 wrote a total of 117 characters in 19

minutes and 40 seconds and 86 (73.5%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the

surface. These characters consisted of 94 semantic radicals and 95 phonetic radicals.

Sixty-seven (71.3%) of the semantic radicals appeared to be correct on the surface and 75

(78.9%) of the phonetic radicals appeared to be correct on the surface. When analyzed

for stroke order, 39 (41.5%) of the semantic radicals were written correctly and 48

(50.5%) of the phonetic radicals were written correctly. The total time to complete both

tasks was 29 minutes and 41 seconds.

Table 5 (Appendix A) shows the results for Participant 57. For the free writing

task, Participant 57 wrote a total of 62 characters in three minutes and 40 seconds and 53

(85.5%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the surface. These characters were

constructed of 51 semantic radicals and 47 phonetic radicals. Fifty (98.0%) of the

semantic radicals appeared to be correct on the surface and 38 (80.9%) of the phonetic

radicals appeared to be correct on the surface. When analyzed for stroke order, 28

(54.9%) of the semantic radicals were written correctly and 12 (25.5%) of the phonetic

radicals were written correctly.

39

For the translation task, Participant 57 wrote a total of 137 characters in ten

minutes and 13 seconds and 127 (94.9%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the

surface. One hundred eight semantic radicals and 109 phonetic radicals were used in

these characters. One hundred five (97.2%) of the semantic radicals appeared to be

correct on the surface and 104 (95.4%) of the phonetic radicals appeared to be correct on

the surface. When analyzed for stroke order, 49 (45.4%) of the semantic radicals were

written correctly and 57 (52.3%) of the phonetic radicals were written correctly. The

total time to complete both tasks was 13 minutes and 53 seconds.

Table 6 (Appendix A) gives the results for Participant 34. For the free writing

task, Participant 34 wrote a total of 25 characters in eight minutes and 44 seconds and 17

(68.0%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the surface. Participant 34 used 16

semantic radicals and 22 phonetic radicals in the 25 characters. Twelve (75.0%) of the

semantic radicals appeared to be correct on the surface and 17 (77.3%) of the phonetic

radicals appeared to be correct on the surface. When strokes were analyzed, two (12.5%)

of the semantic radicals were written correctly and two (9.1%) of the phonetic radicals

were written correctly.

For the translation exercise, Participant wrote a total of 101 characters in 29

minutes and 48 seconds and 65 (64.4%) of the characters appeared to be correct on the

surface. These characters were written with a total of 81 semantic radicals and 79

phonetic radicals. Seventy-one (87.7%) of the semantic radicals appeared to be correct

on the surface and 54 (68.4%) of the phonetic radicals appeared to be correct on the

surface. When strokes were analyzed, eight (9.9%) of the semantic radicals and 18

40

(22.8%) of the phonetic radicals were written correctly. The total time it took to

complete both tasks was 38 minutes and 32 seconds.

Table 7

Means and Standard Deviations

n M SD

Correct Characters (%) 8 82.1 11.9

Correct Semantic Radicals (%) 8 89.5 10.7

Correct Phonetic Radicals (%) 8 84.7 9.7

Correct Semantic Stroke Order (%) 8 34.1 20.3

Correct Phonetic Stroke Order (%) 8 33.9 16.1

Time (m:ss) 8 27:08 8:00

Time Per Character (seconds) 8 12 6

Table 7 gives the means and standard deviations for the percentage of correct

characters, radicals, and stroke orders, time, and time per character for the written and

translations tasks combined.

Table 8

Correlations

Cor.

Char.

Sem.

Rad.

Phon.

Rad.

Sem. Str. Phon.

Str.

Time Time per

Char.

Cor.

Char

1 .773* .946** .546 .492 -.561 -.715*

Sem.

Rad.

1 .603 .353 .161 -.334 -.558

Phon.

Rad.

1 .435 .511 -.534 -.533

Sem. Str. 1 .707* -.515 -.834**

Phon.

Str.

1 -.006 -.657*

Time 1 .482

Time per

Char.

1

* denotes p <.05

** denotes p <.0001

41

Table 8 gives the significant correlations found between the different variables.

There was a positive correlation of .773 between correctly written characters and

correctly written semantic radicals (p= .012). There was a positive correlation of .946

between correctly written characters and correctly written phonetic radicals (p= .0001).

There was a negative correlation of -0.715 between correctly written characters and time

given per character (p= .023). There was a positive correlation of .707 between correctly

written semantic strokes and correctly written phonetic strokes (p= .025). There was a

negative correlation of -0.834 between correctly written semantic strokes and time given

per character (p= .005). There was a negative correlation of -0.657 between correctly

written phonetic strokes and time given per character (p= .039).

DISCUSSION

Even with four participants, this study appears to have a decent cross section of a

Chinese as a foreign language classroom. The lowest score of correct characters overall

was 66.2% and the highest score of correct characters overall was 90.5%, with the overall

average between all participants being 82.1% of characters written correctly. So, while

this study may not have enough participants to be considered a qualitative study, where

the results of which can be expanded to the typical first semester American college

Chinese as a foreign language classroom, the results should be internally viable.

The first focus will be on the number of characters written by the participants.

Participants 20 and 34 wrote roughly the same number of characters overall (128 and 126,

respectively), but to which task the majority of their characters went differed. The reason

behind this was that Participant 20 only had half an hour to allot to the study, so she had

to cut her translation exercise short. Participant 34, on the other hand, seemed to struggle

to come up with his own ideas and characters to share those ideas, but fared better when

words were given to him to translate. Participants 57 and 82 wrote roughly the same

43

number of characters between them (199 and 186, respectively) as well as having roughly

the same distribution of characters between the free writing task (62 and 69, respectively)

and the translation task (137 and 117, respectively).

As seen in Table 6, the number of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals was

close to equal among each participant and for all of the participants combined for each

task and the tasks combined. There were more radicals used in the translation task than

there were used in the free writing task, but this should not be surprising because more

characters were written in the translation task (416) than in the free writing task (223). It

should be noted that most of the characters that were written by the participants in this

study were made up of only either one or more semantic radicals, or one or more

phonetic radicals; that is to say, comparatively few characters were compound characters.

While this may seem odd considering the majority of Chinese characters are

compound characters (Everson, 1998; Ho, Ng, et al., 2003; Su, 2010), it appears that

most of the characters students learn in their first semester of Chinese as a foreign

language are lone semantic radicals or lone phonetic radicals; even in the passage from

the class’s workbook (Y. Liu, Yao, et al., 2009b), which was from the last chapter

finished in the course, very few of the characters are compound characters. Even of those

that incorporate two radicals, many are composed of two semantic radicals rather than

one semantic radical and one phonetic radical.

Considering that the semantic radicals and phonetic radicals occurred with close

to equal frequency among each individual participant and among the tasks (as can be seen

in Figure 1.5), this appears to back up the claim that high frequency words in Chinese

44

tend to use quite a few opaque phonetic radicals and semantic radicals (Everson, 1998;

Ke & Li, 2011; Shu & Anderson, 1997; Su, 2010), as the characters being taught to first

semester students are high frequency words (Su, 2010). Indeed, students may or may not

be aware of the phonetic meanings of 马 (ma) and 巴 (ba) as they appear to be the only

somewhat transparent phonetic radicals to have occurred this far in their study of Chinese.

As for semantic radicals, students may or may not be aware that 讠(yán) is for speaking

related words, 女 (nǚ) is for words related to women, and 口 (kǒu) is related to words

about the mouth (e.g. eating, drinking, as well as grammatical characters). The rest may

as well be a mystery, forcing students to remember characters as a whole because they

have no other characters with similar radicals with which to compare novel characters.

Even the radicals presented before the first lesson of their textbook (Y. Liu, Yao, et al.,

2009a) are composed of radicals that can stand on their own; they are almost all semantic

radicals.

Thus it may come as a surprise that the participants of this study did fairly well

with correctly writing characters, semantic radicals, and phonetic radicals of their

characters. It must be taken into consideration, however, that the participants had their

choice of characters for the free writing task, inviting participants to use only the

characters they felt like they knew how to write, and were asked to use characters which

were mostly from the latter part of the course for the translation task, which are among

the easiest to remember when in the first stage of orthographic awareness for Chinese (Ke

& Li, 2011). The only time that there was a confusion of characters was with Participant

82 when she wrote 王朋 (Wáng Péng, “Wang Peng,” a proper name of one of the

45

characters present in the class’s textbook (Y. Liu, Yao, et al., 2009a)) instead of 朋友

(péngyou, “friend”) where the identical character 朋 (péng) confused the participant. The

confusion of these characters led to writing the correct characters for the words that were

intended to be written 99.0% of the time, compared to the overall score of 79.9% of

characters being written correctly.

For the first research question, regarding if semantic radicals or phonetic radicals

would be more likely to be written correctly or if they would be roughly equal,

participants wrote semantic radicals correctly more often than phonetic radicals, although

the difference was not very large. For the free writing task, semantic radicals were

correct 91.7% of the time while phonetic radicals were correct 86.1% of the time. For the

translation task, semantic radicals were correct 87.2% of the time while the phonetic

radicals were correct 83.4% of the time. For the tasks combined, the semantic radicals

were correct 89.5% of the time while the phonetic radicals were correct 84.7% of the

time.

Common errors in stroke order were the direction of strokes, combining two or

more strokes into one stroke, and the order in which the strokes were written. For the

free writing task, there was a 38.6% rate of correct stroke order within a semantic radical

and a 28.3% rate of correct stroke order within a phonetic radical. For the translation task,

strokes were written in the correct order within semantic radicals 29.7% of the time while

strokes were written in the correct order within phonetic radicals 39.6% of the time. For

both tasks combined, the percentages were very close, with a 34.1% rate of correct stroke

46

order within semantic radicals and a 33.9% rate of correct stroke order within phonetic

radicals.

The errors seen with repeated radicals appeared to mostly be already fossilized;

that is, the strokes within a repeated radical for a given participant were almost always

the same throughout both writing tasks. The only times that participants tended to stray

from fossilized errors regarding strokes was when they separated strokes from strokes

they had combined or the order in which the same repeated stroke was written within a

radical. For example, the image below shows the correct stroke order for the radical 目

and two variant ways that were used by one of the participants. The number shows the

order of the strokes as well as the starting point for each stroke.

Correct stroke order

Incorrect variant 1

47

Incorrect variant 2

In regards to the second research question, correct stroke order was not a

significant factor in forming correct radicals. Even while the participants did rather

poorly writing strokes in the correct order, the radicals looked fine from the surface.

For third research questions, correct stroke order was not a significant factor on

writing characters correctly. The only significance stroke order had was that phonetic

stroke order was significant with the semantic radical stroke order. This makes sense, as

learners would not be expected to get correct stroke order with phonetic radicals but not

with semantic radicals, as all radicals come from the same eight or 24 strokes.

Incorrect and varied stroke order may have an impact later in the participants’

learning, however, as more radicals and characters are expected to be remembered. Just

as recognizing that characters are divided into radicals lessens the cognitive load on one’s

memory (Ho, Yau, & Au, 2003; Su, 2010), being able to divide radicals into eight or 24

basic strokes would lessen the cognitive load even more.

An interesting result of this study is that being able to write correct semantic

radicals and correct phonetic radicals is correlated to writing a character as a whole

correctly (see Table 8). This is likely due to the fact that most the characters written by

48

participants were composed of single radicals (either semantic or phonetic) or composed

of two semantic radicals or two phonetic radicals. When most of the characters are only

a single radical, the participants would have to write that one radical correctly to write the

character correctly.

CONCLUSION

This study involved four native English speakers who were finishing their first

semester of Chinese at Ball State University. At this level of their learning, participants

were able to write many of their characters correctly, as well as radicals. Stroke order,

however, was quite inaccurate. Participants did better on the free writing task than on the

translation task, most likely due to the ease of avoiding unknown characters in the free

writing task. Semantic radicals were correct more often than phonetic radicals. Writing

the correct semantic and phonetic radicals was the strongest correlation to writing correct

characters.

These results suggest that Chinese as a foreign language classrooms should spend

more time on teaching the meanings of semantic radicals and the sounds of phonetic

radicals as students learn new characters, as well as the stroke order. Such a simple

change in teaching methods will make it easier for students to deconstruct characters into

pieces that are less numerous than the number of Chinese characters as a whole. This in

50

turn will make it easier for students to remember how to write new characters, as well as

recognizing them when they are reading.

This study has added to the field of second language acquisition in that it has

given us a glimpse into how English learners of Chinese as a second language acquire

Chinese characters through the types of errors in their writing. As stated previously,

there has been little research done in acquiring a writing system so drastically different

from the writing system of one’s native language; this study has shed some light in this

area. Larger studies will need to be done to make results more generalizable, but this

study can help future researchers know where to look and what to look for.

For future research, this study should be repeated to gather more participants so

that the results could help Chinese as a foreign language teachers nationwide. Part of the

issue in getting participants was that it was very close to finals week, so those who did

come sacrificed valuable study time; perhaps doing a study like this one two to three

weeks before finals week would find more students willing to participate. Moreover, this

study should be repeated with questions to the participants about how they think about

characters and what methods they use to remember characters. Furthermore, more

studies similar to this one should be done with students of higher fluency, preferably at

each semester of Chinese they study. It would be very interesting to see if more

characters are remembered, correct, and written correctly as students become more fluent.

Studies should also be conducted on left-handed learners of Chinese, dyslexic

learners of Chinese, and learners of Chinese who hold both attributes. What was found

with Participant 5 was quite interesting, but unfortunately could not be used due to these

51

variables that made her unlike any of the other participants. I would like to see studies

done with these people to see not only how they learn to write Chinese characters, but if

they create their own rules of writing that help them learn, if these rules work reliably,

and if a particular type of instruction would assist them in learning Chinese.

While the teaching of radicals should remain a focus of teachers of Chinese as a

second language (Ho, et al., 1999; Shen & Ke, 2007; Su, 2010), I believe that the

teaching of strokes should be of more importance in the classroom than it is now. While

it does not appear that stroke order matters at the end of the first semester of college

study in order for students to write characters correctly, teaching students stroke order

may lessen the cognitive load present in writing Chinese characters. This is even more

important as students progress through courses and more characters are expected to be

remembered; the fewer ways to write given radicals that need to be remembered, the

easier it will be for stroke order to become automatic so that learners can focus more of

their attention on radicals and characters as a whole.

This study has added to an insufficiently researched area of second language

acquisition and I hope that it encourages others to look into it as well. As more studies

are conducted on what errors students make when writing Chinese characters and how

they learn to write characters, the knowledge gained through such will help improve

Chinese as a foreign language pedagogy.

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APPENDIX A

Table 3

Results for Participant 20

Free Writing

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

我 1

1

0

有 1

1

0

一 1 1

1

个 1 1

0

朋 1

1

0

友 1 1 1 0 1

她 1 1 1 0 0

叫 1 1 1 0 1

她 1 1 1 0 0

生 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

生 1

1

0

日 1 1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

一 1 1

1

九 1

1

0

八 1

1

1

八 1

1

1

59

年 1 1

0

九 1

1

1

月 1 1

0

五 1

1

0

日 1 1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

二 1

1

1

十 1

1

0

三 1 1

1

岁 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

人 1 1

1

她 1 1 1 0 0

喜 1 1

0

1

0

欢 0 0 1 0 1

看 1 1

1

1

0

电 1 1

0

影 1 1 1 1 0

和 0 1 0 0 0

去 1

1

0

跳 1 1 1 0 0

舞 1 1 1 0 0

她 1 1 1 0 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

妈 1 1 1 0 0

妈 1 1 1 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

医 1

1

0

生 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

爸 1 1 1 0 0

爸 1 1 1 0 0

60

是 1 1

0

1

1

工 1

1

1

人 1

1

1

她 1 1 1 0 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

弟 1

1

0

弟 1

1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

她 1 1 1 0 0

没 1 1 1 0 0

有 1

1

0

妹 0 1 0 0 0

妹 0 1 0 0 0

Total

67 67 54 49 54 49

Total correct

63 53 46 12 13

Time (minutes) 14:21

Translation

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

昨 0 0 1 0 0

天 1

1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

生 1

1

0

日 1 1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

61

请 0 1 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

0

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 1 1 1 0 1

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

三 1 1

1

个 1 1

1

学 1

1

0

生 1

1

0

去 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 1 1

0

1

0

吃 1 1 1 0 0

饭 1 1 1 1 0

晚 1 1 1 0 0

上 1 1

1

七 0

0

0

点 1 1 1 1 0

他 1 1 1 1 0

吃 0 1 0 0 0

晚 1 1 1 0 0

饭 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 0 1

0

0

0

可 1

1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

62

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 0 1

0

0

0

高 1

1

0

兴 1

1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

爸 1 1 1 0 0

爸 1 1 1 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

老 1

1

0

师 1 1

1

1

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

他 1 1 1 1 0

意 0 0

0

1

0

思 1 1

0

1

0

Total

61 61 55 43 55 43

Total correct

53 51 39 12 14

Time (minutes) 12:05

63

Table 4

Results for Participant 82

Free Writing

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

我 1

1

0

有 1

1

0

一 1 1

1

个 1 1

1

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

他 1 1 1 1 1

叫 1 1 1 0 1

他 1 1 1 1 1

是 1 1

1

1

1

我 1

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

男 0 1

0

0

0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

他 1 1 1 1 1

的 1 1 1 0 1

日 1 1

1

生 1

1

1

是 1 1

1

1

1

五 1

1

1

月 1 1

1

十 1

1

0

八 1

1

1

号 0

0

0

他 1 1 1 1 1

家 1 1

0

1

0

有 1

1

0

六 1 1

1

口 1

1

1

64

人 1 1

1

他 1 1 1 1 1

有 1

1

0

二 1

1

1

个 1 1

1

弟 1

1

1

弟 1

1

0

一 1 1

1

个 1 1

1

姐 1 1 1 1 1

姐 1 1 1 1 1

爸 1 1 1 0 0

爸 1 1 1 0 0

妈 1 1 1 1 0

妈 1 1 1 1 0

和 0 1 0 1 0

他 1 1 1 1 1

他 1 1 1 1 1

也 1

1

1

是 1 1

0

1

1

大 1

1

0

学 1

1

0

生 1

1

0

我 1

1

0

们 1 1 1 1 0

想 0 1 0 0 1

看 0 1

0

0

0

电 1 1

0

视 0 0 1 0 0

他 1 1 1 1 1

的 1 1 1 0 1

妈 1 1 1 1 0

妈 1 1 1 1 0

也 1

1

1

是 1 1

0

1

1

大 1

1

0

学 1

1

0

65

生 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 1 0

Total

69 69 48 52 48 52

Total correct

62 46 48 31 27

Time (minutes) 10:01

Translation

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

昨 0 0 1 0 1

天 1

1

1

是 1 1

1

1

1

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

日 1 1

1

生 1

1

0

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

问 1 1 0 1 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 0 0 0 0 0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

的 1 1 1 0 1

同 0

0

0

学 1

1

0

66

去 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 1 1

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 1 1

1

1

0

吃 0 1 0 1 0

饭 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

爸 1 1 1 0 0

爸 1 1 1 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

老 1

1

0

师 0 1

1

0

0

和 0 0 0 0 0

他 1 1 1 1 1

有 1

1

0

意 0 0

0

1

1

思 1 1

0

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

小 1

1

1

的 1 1 1 0 1

妈 1 1 1 1 0

妈 1 1 1 1 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

医 0

0

0

生 1

1

1

昨 0 0 1 0 1

天 1

1

1

她 1 1 1 1 1

很 0 1 0 1 0

忙 1 1 1 0 0

67

她 1 1 1 1 1

九 1

1

1

点 1 1 1 1 0

才 1

1

1

回 1

1

1

来 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 1 0

吃 0 1 0 1 0

晚 1 1 1 1 1

饭 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

哥 1 1

1

1

0

哥 1 1

1

1

0

和 0 0 0 0 0

和 1 1 0 1 0

和 0 0 0 0 0

姐 1 1 1 1 1

姐 1 1 1 1 1

不 0

0

0

吃 0 1 0 1 0

饭 1 1 1 1 0

在 1 1 1 0 0

家 0 1

0

1

0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

和 0 0 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

0

0

妈 1 1 1 1 1

妈 1 1 1 1 1

爸 1 1 1 0 0

爸 1 1 1 0 0

喝 1 1 1 1 1

68

茶 1

1

0

和 0 0 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 0 0 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 0 0

0

1

0

喝 1 1 1 1 1

可 0

0

0

乐 1

1

0

和 0 0 0 0 0

看 1 1

0

1

1

电 1 1

0

视 0 0 1 0 1

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 0 0 0 0 0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

十 1

1

0

点 1 1 1 1 0

晚 1 1 1 1 1

上 1 1

0

回 1

1

1

家 1 1

1

1

0

Total

117 117 94 95 94 95

Total correct

86 67 75 39 48

69

Time (minutes) 19:40

70

Table 5

Results for Participant 57

Free Writing

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

我 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

友 1 1 1 0 1

叫 1 1 1 1 1

王 1

1

0

友 1 1 1 1 1

他 1 1 1 1 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

二 1

1

1

十 1

1

0

岁 1

1

0

他 1 1 1 1 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

生 1

1

0

日 1 1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

八 1

1

1

月 1 1

1

十 1

1

0

九 1

1

1

日 1 1

0

他 1 1 1 1 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

中 1

1

0

国 1 1 1 0 0

人 1 1

1

王 1

1

0

友 1 1 1 0 1

喜 1 1

0

1

1

欢 0 0 0 0 0

71

看 1 1

0

1

0

电 1 1

0

视 0 1 0 1 0

他 1 1 1 1 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 1 1

1

1

0

有 1

1

0

四 1

1

0

口 1

1

1

人 1 1

1

他 1 1 1 1 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

妈 1 1 1 1 1

妈 0 1 0 1 0

和 1 1 1 1 0

一 1 1

1

个 1 1

1

哥 1

1

0

1

0

哥 1

1

0

1

0

他 1 1 1 1 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

医 1

1

0

生 1

1

0

他 1 1 1 1 0

妈 0 1 0 1 0

妈 0 1 0 1 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

老 1

1

0

师 1 1

1

1

0

72

Total

62 62 51 47 51 47

Total correct

53 51 38 28 12

Time (minutes) 3:40

Translation

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

昨 1 1 1 0 1

天 1

1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

生 1

1

0

日 1 1

0

小 1 1 1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

请 1 1 1 0 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 1 1 1 1 0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

的 1 1 1 0 1

三 1 1

1

个 1 1

1

同 1

1

1

学 1

1

0

去 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 1 0

的 1 1 1 0 1

73

家 1 1

1

1

0

吃 1 1 1 1 1

饭 1 1 1 1 1

晚 1 1 1 0 1

上 1 1

1

七 1

1

0

点 1 1 1 1 1

他 1 1 1 1 0

们 1 1 1 1 1

吃 1 1 1 1 1

晚 1 1 1 0 1

饭 1 1 1 1 1

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 1 1

1

1

0

不 1

1

1

大 1

1

0

可 1

1

0

是 1 1

0

1

1

很 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

爸 0 1 0 0 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

是 1 1

0

1

1

老 1

1

0

师 1 1

1

1

0

他 1 1 1 1 0

很 1 1 1 1 0

有 1

1

0

意 1 1

0

74

1

1

思 1 1

0

1

1

小 1 1 1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

妈 1 1 1 1 1

妈 1 1 1 1 1

是 1 1

0

1

1

医 1

1

0

生 1

1

0

昨 1 1 1 0 1

天 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 1 0

很 1 1 1 1 0

忙 1 1 1 0 0

九 1

1

1

点 1 1 1 1 1

她 1 1 1 1 0

才 1

1

1

回 1

1

0

家 1 1

1

1

0

吃 1 1 1 1 1

饭 1 1 1 1 0

了 1 1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

哥 1

1

0

1

0

哥 1

1

0

1

0

和 0 0 1 0 0

姐 1 1 1 1 1

姐 1 1 1 1 1

没 1 1 1 0 1

75

在 1 1 1 0 0

家 1 1

1

1

0

吃 1 1 1 1 1

饭 1 1 1 1 1

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

和 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

爸 0 1 0 0 0

爸 0 1 0 0 0

妈 1 1 1 1 1

妈 1 1 1 1 1

一 1 1

1

起 0 0 1 0 1

0

0

喝 1 1 1 1 0

茶 1

1

1

和 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 1 1 1 1 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

喝 1 1 1 1 0

可 1

1

0

乐 1

1

0

看 1 1

1

1

0

电 1 1

0

视 0 1 0 1 0

小 1

1

1

高 1

1

1

小 1

1

1

76

张 1 1 1 0 0

和 1 1 1 1 0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

十 1

1

0

点 1 1 1 1 1

才 1

1

1

回 1

1

0

家 1 1

0

1

0

Total

137 137 108 109 108 109

Total correct

127 105 104 49 57

Time (minutes) 10:13

77

Table 6

Results for Participant 34

Free Writing

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

我 0

0

0

朋 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

是 0 1

0

0

0

三 1 1

1

十 1

1

0

四 1

1

0

岁 1

1

0

五 1

1

0

月 1 1

0

三 1 1

1

十 1

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

喜 0 0

0

1

0

欢 1 1 1 0 0

去 1

1

0

舞 0 0 0 0 0

跳 0 0 1 0 0

她 1 1 1 0 0

有 1

1

0

哥 0

1

0

0

0

哥 0

1

0

0

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

姐 1 1 1 0 1

姐 1 1 1 0 1

Total

25 25 16 22 16 22

Total correct

17 12 17 2 2

78

Time (minutes) 8:44

Translation

Correct radical Correct stroke order

Intended Character Correct character Semantic Phonetic Semantic Phonetic

天 1

1

0

李 1 1

0

1

0

小 1

1

1

生 0

0

0

日 1 1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

请 1 1 1 0 0

小 1

1

1

高 0

0

0

小 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 0 0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

三 1 1

1

学 1

1

0

吃 0 0 0 0 0

饭 0 0 1 0 0

家 1 1

0

1

1

点 1 1 1 1 0

他 1 1 1 0 0

们 1 1 1 0 0

吃 1 1 1 0 0

晚 0 1 0 0 0

饭 0 0 1 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

家 0 1

0

0

0

79

没 1 1 1 1 0

有 1

1

0

大 1

1

0

小 1

1

1

李 0 1

0

0

0

是 0 1

0

0

0

老 1

1

0

师 0 1

1

0

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

他 1 1 1 0 0

有 1

1

0

思 1 1

0

1

0

意 0 0

0

1

0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

妈 0 1 0 0 0

妈 0 1 0 0 0

天 0

1

0

她 1 1 1 0 0

很 1 1 1 0 0

忙 0 0 0 0 0

她 1 1 1 0 0

晚 0 1 0 0 0

上 1 1 0

九 0

0

0

点 1 1 1 1 0

家 1 1

0

1

0

吃 1 1 1 0 0

晚 0 1 0 0 0

饭 0 0 1 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

80

哥 0

1

0

0

0

哥 0

1

0

0

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

姐 1 1 1 0 1

姐 1 1 1 0 0

没 1 1 1 1 0

有 1

1

0

家 1 1

0

1

0

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

的 1 1 1 0 1

家 1 1

0

1

0

喝 0 1 1 0 0

茶 0

0

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

高 0

0

0

小 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 0 0

小 1

1

1

李 1 1

0

1

0

喝 0 1 1 0 0

可 0

0

0

和 0 1 0 0 0

看 1 1

0

1

0

电 1 1

0

小 1

1

1

高 0

0

0

小 1

1

1

和 0 1 0 0 0

81

王 1

1

0

朋 1

1

0

回 1

1

0

家 1 1

0

1

0

晚 0 1 0 0 0

上 1 1

0

十 1

1

0

点 1 1 1 1 0

Total

101 101 81 79 81 79

Total correct

65 71 54 8 18

Time (minutes) 29:48

APPENDIX B

Interview Questions

What is your native language?

How long have you been speaking Chinese?

How long have you been listening to Chinese?

How long have you been reading Chinese?

How long have you been writing Chinese?

83

For the following paragraphs, please write as much as you can. If you forget how to

write parts of a character, try to write it to the best of your ability. If you can’t remember

how to write the character at all, guess what that character looks like and write it so that I

know that you are aware a character should be there even if you forgot how to write it.

Tell me about your best friend in Chinese. How old is he/she? When is his/her birthday?

Where is he/she from? What does he/she like to do for fun? What his/her family like?

Does he/she have brothers or sisters? What do his/her parents do for a living?

84

Please translate the following paragraph into Chinese:

Yesterday was Little Li’s birthday. Little Li asked Little Gao, Little Zhang, and Wang

Peng’s three classmates to go to her house to eat. They ate dinner at 7:00 pm. Little Li’s

house isn’t big, but it is beautiful. Little Li’s father is a teacher and he is very interesting.

Little Li’s mother is a doctor. Yesterday, she was very busy. She finally came home and

ate dinner at 9:00 pm. Little Li’s older brother and older sister did not eat at home.

Wang Peng and Little Li’s parents drank tea and chatted together. Little Gao, Little

Zhang, and Little Li drank cola and watched television. Little Gao, Little Zhang, and

Wang Peng finally went home at 10:00 pm.