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Analytic Versus Holistic Recognition of Chinese Words Among

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Analytic Versus Holistic Recognition
of Chinese Words Among L2 Learners
NAN JIANG,1 FENGYUN HOU,2 AND XIN JIANG3
1
University of Maryland, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 3215 Jimenez Hall, College Park, MD
20742 Email: njiang@umd.edu
2
Beijing Language and Culture University, Center for Studies of Chinese as a Second Language, No. 15 Xueyuan
Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083 China Email: fengyunhou16@163.com
3
Beijing Language and Culture University, Center for Studies of Chinese as a Second Language, No. 15 Xueyuan
Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083 China Email: jiangxin6@163.com

In studying the relationship between word recognition and reading development, a distinction is made
between analytic and holistic processing of words. These strategies are often assessed in a length effect in
an alphabetic language or in a stroke-number effect in a logographic language. Analytical processing is
associated with a robust length or stroke-number effect while holistic processing is reflected in smaller or
a lack of such effects. Research has shown that skilled readers employ holistic processing while less skilled
readers rely more on analytical processing. The present study examined analytic versus holistic word
recognition among second language learners by comparing learners of Chinese as a second language
(CSL) and Chinese native speakers (NSs) in a lexical decision task. Thirty Chinese NSs and 28 CSL
learners were tested on 90 disyllabic Chinese words that varied in stroke number from 5 to 27. A robust
stroke-number effect was found among CSL participants but not among NS controls. The findings raised
a number of theoretical and pedagogical issues in relation to word recognition and reading development
among CSL learners and among second language learners in general.
Keywords: Chinese as a second language; word recognition; analytic processing; holistic processing;
stroke-number effect

AN INDIVIDUAL MAY RECOGNIZE A
written word by its component letters one at
a time. Alternatively, multiple letters may be
recognized at the same time. In studying the
relationship between word recognition and read-
ing development, a distinction is often made
between these two types of visual word recogni-
tion processes or strategies: serial processing and
parallel processing (e.g., Bijeljac–Babic et al.,
2004; Marinus, Nation, & de Jong; 2015). Similar
distinctions have been made between analytic
and holistic (or global, whole-word) processing,
and between sublexical and lexical processing
(e.g., Grainger et al., 2012; Hawelka, Gagl, &
Wimmer, 2010; Kuo et al., 2014; Pritchard et al.,
2018; Rau, Moeller, & Landerl, 2014). The two
The Modern Language Journal, 0, 0, (2020)
DOI: 10.1111/modl.12662
0026-7902/20/1–15 $1.50/0
© National Federation of Modern Language Teachers
Associations
processes differ in the size of the processing units.
Where a serial (or analytic, sublexical) strategy
is taken, a word is processed by its component
units (e.g., letters or graphemes), one at a time
at the stage of visual input analysis. In parallel
(or global, lexical) processing, all or multiple
components are processed at the same time.1
ASSESSING SERIAL AND PARALLEL
PROCESSING: THE LENGTH AND
STROKE-NUMBER EFFECTS
Such reading strategies are often assessed
through the word length effect in alphabetic lan-
guages such as English. The length effect refers
to a longer reaction time (RT)—and sometimes
a lower accuracy rate as well—while responding
to longer words. For example, if we are asked to
read aloud 30 three-letter words and 30 five-letter
words that are matched in other lexical proper-
ties, and the mean RTs are 500 and 600 ms, respec-
tively, then there is a length effect of 100 ms. The
2 The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)
presence of a length effect, or a stronger length
effect, is often taken as an indication of serial pro-
cessing; the absence of or smaller length effects
are taken as evidence for parallel processing (e.g.,
Hawelka et al., 2010; Juphard, Carbonnel, & Val-
dois, 2004; Price & Humphreys, 1995).
Through the examination of the length effect,
several findings have been reported about the
relationship between word recognition strategies
and reading development. First, serial processing
is associated with less skilled reading while paral-
lel processing is associated with more developed
reading skills. For example, Marinus et al. (2015)
divided English-speaking 3rd and 4th graders
into slower and faster reading groups based on
their reading performance. The participants were
asked to read aloud words of three to five letters
in length. They found that only the slower read-
ers showed a length effect. It took them 112 ms
longer to read words of five letters compared to
words of three letters. The faster readers, however,
showed no such difference. These results sug-
gested that faster readers seemed to adopt a par-
allel or holistic processing strategy and were thus
not affected by word length, while slower read-
ers adopted a serial strategy. Where school chil-
dren and adults have been compared, children
have often produced a stronger length effect than
adults (e.g., Rau et al., 2014), with the latter group
often showing no length effect (e.g., Bijeljac–
Babic et al., 2004; Tiffin–Richards & Schroeder,
2015; Weekes, 1997). Additionally, dyslexic read-
ers were found to produce a stronger length ef-
fect than age-matched individuals (e.g., Hawelka
et al., 2010; Martens & de Jong, 2006; Ziegler
et al., 2003; Zoccolotti et al., 2005). Thus, slower,
developing, and dyslexic readers are more likely
to adopt a serial processing strategy than skilled
readers.
Second, the length effect has also been found
to interact with lexical frequency or familiarity,
such that the length effect was stronger or only
present for lower frequency words, and this
interaction is particularly pronounced for de-
veloping or slower readers. Tiffin–Richards and
Schroeder (2015) tested 103 2nd graders and 24
adults in a sentence-reading task where words of
different length and frequency were embedded
in stimulus sentences. Eye-tracking data showed
a robust interaction of length and frequency for
the 2nd graders but not for the adults. Similarly,
the dyslexic participants showed a length × fre-
quency interaction in the number of fixations but
unimpaired participants did not (Hawelka et al.,
2010). Similar findings have also been reported
in other studies (e.g., Hyönä & Olson, 1995;
Rau et al., 2014, 2015). These results suggested
that developing or impaired readers were able
to process high-frequency words in a parallel
fashion while skilled readers were likely to adopt
a parallel strategy for words across a wide range of
frequency.
Finally, research has also demonstrated that
reading development involves a transition from
more serial to more parallel processing in the
first years of reading experience. For example,
Bijeljac–Babic et al. (2004) tested 3rd graders, 5th
graders, and adults in identification and naming
tasks involving words of varying length. The re-
sults showed a decreasing trend in the length ef-
fect across the three age groups, with a robust
length effect for the 3rd graders and an absence of
this effect among adults. In comparing 2nd, 3rd,
4th graders and adults, Rau et al. (2014) found
different performance patterns for different age
groups. The 2nd graders did not only produce
a larger length effect but also showed no inter-
action between length and frequency, suggesting
that they adopted a serial strategy for all words.
The 3rd graders showed a smaller length effect
as well as an interaction between length and fre-
quency, suggesting that they began to adopt a
parallel strategy for high-frequency words. Simi-
lar findings were reported by Aghababian & Nazir
(2000). They showed that the length effect in
correctly identifying words decreased across five
grade groups, with 1st graders producing the
strongest length effect. Thus, developing readers
start by using serial processing strategies for their
first 2 years of reading experiences but begin to
adopt parallel processing in their 3rd year, begin-
ning from high-frequency words. By the end of
the 4th year, they may be characterized as paral-
lel readers.
The length effect is less relevant to the logo-
graphic Chinese language, whose words are writ-
ten in a square space of the same size. Instead,
Chinese characters differ in visual complexity in
terms of the number of strokes, among other
measures. Some characters contain fewer strokes
such as  ‘big’ and  ‘small,’ both contain-
ing three strokes, and other characters consist
of many more strokes such as  ‘hide’ and 
‘win,’ each containing 17 strokes. This difference
extends to disyllabic words such as   ‘adult’
(5 strokes) and  ‘road’ (25 strokes).2 Thus,
strokes may be considered as similar to letters as
component units of words, and stroke number
may be considered as a parallel factor to length
that affects visual word recognition.
Following this analysis, we may consider
a stroke-number effect (i.e., a longer RT in
Nan Jiang, Fengyun Hou, and Xin Jiang
responding to words of more strokes) as similar
to the length effect in reflecting the type of
processing strategies individuals adopt. A stroke-
number effect may be interpreted as indicating
a serial or analytical processing strategy, and the
absence of a stroke-number effect may reflect a
parallel or holistic strategy. This was indeed the
rationale adopted in several studies that have
considered the effect of stroke numbers in Chi-
nese word recognition (e.g., Chen & Yung, 1989;
Just & Carpenter, 1987; Su & Samuels, 2010).
A great deal of research has been reported on
the stroke-number effect in Chinese word recog-
nition. An overview of this literature suggests
that the findings were quite inconsistent across
studies. A number of studies reported a stroke-
number effect when Chinese native speakers
(NSs) were asked to perform a naming, lexical
decision, or reading task, in that the participants
were slower in responding to Chinese characters
with more strokes (e.g., Just & Carpenter, 1987;
Peng & Wang, 1997; Tan & Peng, 1990; Yu & Cao,
1992). Several recent norming studies have also
reported a significant relation between stroke
number and RT (Lee et al., 2015; Liu, Shu, &
Li, 2007; Sun et al., 2018; Tsang et al., 2018; Tse
et al., 2017). Other studies, however, reported
no stroke-number effect in similar tasks. For
example, Chen and Yung (1989) included words
of different stroke numbers (4–6, 8–11, 13–15)
in a lexical decision task and the participants
showed no main effect of stroke number. Chen,
Allport, and Marshall (1996) also included a
stroke-number manipulation in their study.
Again, the participants did not show a stroke-
number effect in a same–different comparison
task. Similarly, Gao, Zhong, & Zen (1995) found
no stroke-number effect in a naming task.
This research has also reported findings that
were parallel to the length effect in word recog-
nition in an alphabetic language. One of them
is an interaction between stroke number and fre-
quency. Leong, Cheng, and Mulcahy (1987) asked
Chinese readers to perform two tasks of naming
(Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment
2). Independent variables included participants’
reading skills, lexical frequency, and visual com-
plexity of the test items (mean stroke number be-
ing 7.4 and 13.7, respectively, for the simple and
complex conditions of the visual complexity vari-
able). There was a main effect for all three vari-
ables and an interaction of frequency and com-
plexity. The stroke-number effect applied only to
low-frequency words. Even though statistical anal-
yses were not reported regarding the interaction
of reading skill and the complexity effect, there
3
was a clear trend for lower skill participants to pro-
duce a stronger complexity effect. The interaction
of stroke number and frequency may also be seen
across studies. In the absence of a stroke-number
effect in several experimental studies (Chen et al.,
1996; Chen & Yung, 1989; Gao et al., 1995),
all norming studies reported a significant stroke-
number effect (Lee et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2007;
Sun et al., 2018; Tsang et al., 2018; Tse et al., 2017).
A common feature of the norming studies was the
large number of words involved: 2,423 words in
Liu et al.; 3,423 words in Lee et al.; over 12,000
words in Tsang et al.; over 25,000 in Tse et al.; and
approximately 40,000 words in Sun et al. (they
were norming studies, after all). The inclusion of
a large number of words inevitably means the in-
clusion of low-frequency words, which may be re-
sponsible for the observation of a stroke-number
effect.
Similar to what was found in English, a transi-
tion from analytic to holistic processing has also
been reported in children learning to read Chi-
nese. Su and Samuels (2010) tested 2nd, 4th, and
6th graders and adults in Taiwan in a word recog-
nition task (deciding whether they knew the stim-
ulus). Only 2nd graders showed a stroke-number
effect; the 4th and 6th graders and adults showed
no such effects. The authors interpreted this re-
sult as suggesting that “beginning Chinese read-
ers process characters in an analytical way, but that
the decoding process changes gradually from an-
alytic to holistic as their reading skills develop”
(p. 1,085).
In sum, a distinction is made between serial
(or analytic) and parallel (or holistic) visual word
recognition strategies. They have been assessed
in terms of a length effect in an alphabetic lan-
guage or a stroke-number effect in a logographic
language. A length or a stroke-number effect is
considered as reflecting the adoption of a se-
rial and analytical processing strategy, which in
turn are associated with different levels of reading
skills or development. Early or less skilled readers
tend to use an analytical processing strategy, and
skilled readers are more likely to rely on a paral-
lel or holistic strategy in visual word recognition.
Reading development often entails a transition
from analytic to holistic processing in visual word
recognition.
ANALYTICAL AND GLOBAL PROCESSING
IN L2 CHINESE
The issue of serial versus parallel processing of
words among second language (L2) learners has
not received much attention. Even though quite
4 The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)
a number of studies have considered whether L2
words are represented and processed holistically,
these studies have focused on complex words and
multiword units such as formulaic expressions
and collocations (see Jiang, 2018, Chapter 5, for
a review). Little research has examined the role
of sublexical units such as letters and strokes in
L2 word recognition. In this study, we examined
this issue by exploring the stroke-number effect
among learners of Chinese as a second language
(CSL).
One may speculate that Chinese word recogni-
tion may be more analytical among CSL learners
than among Chinese NSs. The first reason has to
do with how Chinese characters are taught and
learned in a CSL context. It is a common prac-
tice to emphasize character components such as
strokes and radicals in both teaching and learn-
ing to read and write Chinese characters (e.g.,
Everson, 2011; Hsiung et al., 2017; Ke, 1998; Shen,
2004, 2005; Shen & Ke, 2007; Taft & Chung, 1999;
Zhu & Hong, 2005). This is likely to result in
the adoption of an analytical strategy in process-
ing Chinese characters, emphasizing the identi-
fication of strokes and radicals and how they re-
late to each other. Second, processing strategies
are related to the amount of exposure to visual
input, as shown by the findings reviewed earlier
(e.g., Bijeljac–Babic et al., 2004; Rau et al., 2014;
Su & Samuels, 2010). As learners of a new lan-
guage and often a new script, CSL learners are
likely to have limited exposure to Chinese charac-
ters, which may also lead to the use of an analytical
strategy as a favored or default one, more so than
native Chinese speakers.
There is little empirical evidence in the English
literature about this phenomenon. In the only
study we found that considered the role of visual
complexity in word recognition among CSL learn-
ers in the English literature, Wang, Perfetti, and
Liu (2003) examined the variables of frequency
and visual complexity in lexical decision and nam-
ing. In manipulating the latter, they included Chi-
nese characters that consisted of a single stroke
pattern (e.g., ) or multiple stroke patterns that
were referred to as radicals (e.g., , consisting of
a right and a left radical). They found a main ef-
fect of complexity and an interaction of complex-
ity and frequency, in that the complexity effect was
reliable only for low-frequency words in the lexical
decision data, but no complexity effect was found
in the naming data. Even though radical number
and stroke number may often be correlated, they
are not identical, as shown in Chen et al. (1996).
Thus, the results do not speak specifically to the
stroke-number effect. Some studies have reported
a stroke-number effect in the Chinese literature.
The effect has been found in RT and/or error rate
(ER) in a variety of tasks, such as naming, lexical
decision, and word identification (e.g., You, 2003;
Zhang, 2008), but other studies have reported no
such effect (e.g., Hao, 2018; Liu, 2008). More im-
portantly, none of these studies included a native-
speaker control group for comparison. As a result,
it is not clear whether the observation or the lack
of a stroke-number effect was a unique effect for
CSL speakers.
THE PRESENT STUDY
The purpose of this study was to explore if
indeed CSL speakers adopted a more analytical
strategy in processing written Chinese words
than native Chinese speakers. To this end, we
compared how stroke number affected word
recognition time and accuracy in Chinese NSs
and CSL learners in a lexical decision task. Stroke
number was chosen rather than the number of
stroke patterns or radicals because the stroke is
the most basic unit in Chinese character writing
and is the easiest to define and operationalize.
Disyllabic high-frequency words were used for
two reasons: to ensure they were familiar to the
prospective CSL participants, and to create a con-
dition where Chinese NSs were less likely to show
a stroke effect. If CSL speakers adopted an ana-
lytical strategy, we would expect them to produce
a robust stroke-number effect, that is, responding
more slowly to words with more strokes than
words of fewer strokes. Native Chinese speakers
would either produce a significantly smaller
effect or no effect. Given the fact that the stimuli
were of relative high frequency and the lack of
a stroke-number effect among adult NSs (e.g.,
Chen & Yung, 1989; Su & Samuels, 2010), we were
more inclined to expect no stroke-number effect
among NSs. A direct comparison of NSs and CSL
speakers under the same experimental condi-
tions (the same stimuli and task) will provide
more unequivocal evidence for understanding
whether word recognition is more analytical
among L2 learners. Also considered in the study
were the factors of familiarity and frequency and
their interaction with the stroke-number factor.
METHOD
Participants
The participants of the study included 30 Chi-
nese NSs and 28 CSL learners. All participants
Nan Jiang, Fengyun Hou, and Xin Jiang
TABLE 1
Descriptive Information for the Test Materials
(n = 90)
Characteristic Mean SD Min Max
Number of strokes 15.03 4.4 5 27
Familiarity (1–10) 8.33 1.7 3 10
Frequency 104.00 176.4 1 1110
(per million)
Note. SD = standard deviation; Min = minimum; Max =
maximum.
were college students and in their 20s except for
one NS and four CSL speakers, who were in their
early 30s. All NSs and 11 of the CSL learners were
tested in China, and 17 CSL speakers were tested
in the United States. All CSL speakers were En-
glish NSs who were in their 3rd-year Chinese pro-
gram or higher.
Materials
Ninety disyllabic Chinese words were selected.
All these words were selected for their famil-
iarity to prospective CSL participants. They in-
cluded some words from the textbooks used in the
United States. They varied in stroke number from
5 to 27. Frequency information was also collected
based on Cai & Brysbaert (2010). The descriptive
information for the test materials is summarized
in Table 1. Ninety nonwords were constructed by
combining two Chinese characters such that they
did not form a word or make sense. See the Ap-
pendix for the word stimuli.
Procedure
The participants were tested individually. In-
structions were provided both on an instruction
sheet and on the computer monitor. The test be-
gan with 10 practice items followed by 180 test
items displayed in a different random order for
each participant. The participants were asked to
decide whether a stimulus displayed on a com-
puter monitor was a word as quickly and accu-
rately as possible. They responded by pressing one
of the designated keys on a keyboard. A subset
of 16 CSL participants tested in China and in the
United States rated their familiarity with the stim-
ulus words after the test. The rating was done on
a 1–10 scale with 10 indicating the highest level of
familiarity. Test material display and data collec-
tion were done using DMDX (Forster & Forster,
2003).
5
RESULTS
In analyzing results, a mean familiarity score
was calculated for each word. The participants
produced a mean familiarity score of 8.33 on a
1–10 scale, suggesting the words as a whole were
highly familiar to the participants. These scores,
along with stroke number and frequency infor-
mation, served as predictor variables. A mean RT
and a mean error rate (ER) score were also com-
puted for each word for each participant group,
thus creating four dependent variables: RT and
ER for NS participants and RT and ER for CSL
participants. While doing so, conventional data
treatment procedures were applied. Any partici-
pant who made an ER of 25% or higher was ex-
cluded. This affected two CSL participants, with
26 CSL participants remaining. RTs for incorrect
responses were excluded. Any RT data point that
was 2.5 standard deviations below or above the
mean of the same participants, or any RT that
was below 300 ms or above 5,000 ms, were treated
as outliers and trimmed. This procedure affected
2.6% of the data for both NS and CSL partici-
pants. The mean RT and ER for the NS group
were 564 ms and 2.59%, and those for the CSL
group were 987 ms and 15.1%.
While performing statistical analysis, RT data
were all log transformed to improve the normal
distribution. All values were then transformed
into z scores before standardized multiple lin-
ear regressions were run. The regression mod-
els included three predictor variables: familiarity,
stroke number, and frequency. All three predic-
tor variables were entered in the model at first;
the variable that had the highest t value was then
excluded one at a time until no variable had a sig-
nificant effect with a p value set at .05. Table 2 dis-
plays the regression results for all three predictor
variables for the four dependent variables.
Several findings emerged from this analysis, as
is clear from Table 2. First, familiarity affected the
performance of both groups in terms of both RT
and ER. Items of higher familiarity were associ-
ated with faster RTs and lower ERs. Frequency
was also predictable of both groups’ RTs, but not
ERs. The participants tended to be faster in re-
sponding to words of higher frequency than those
of lower frequency but not always more accurate
with the former. More importantly, the variable of
stroke number was predictable of the RT data of
the CSL group only. Words of more strokes led to
longer RTs among this group, but the NS group
was not affected by stroke number. The relation-
ship between stroke number and response time
for the two groups is shown in Figure 1.
6 The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)
TABLE 2
Standardized Multiple Linear Regression Analyses of the Reaction Time (RT) and Error Rate (ER) Data

Adjusted
Coefficient Estimate Std. Error t value Pr (>|t|) R-squared

NS RT
Familiarity −.480 .096 −4.980 3.3e–06*** .248
Frequency −.254 .103 −2.457 .016* .047
Stroke number −.067 .106 −.637 .526
NS ER
Familiarity −.294 .106 −2.756 .007** .079
Frequency −.048 .106 −.457 .648
Stroke number −.084 .103 −.821 .414
CSL RT
Familiarity −.556 .076 −7.269 1.64e–10*** .527
Frequency −.238 .076 −3.129 .002** .232
Stroke number .235 .073 3.184 .002** .074
Familiarity: stroke number .194 .079 2.455 .016*
CSL ER
Familiarity −.799 .067 −11.827 <2e–16*** .631
Frequency −.017 .067 −.255 .799
Stroke number .034 .065 .530 .597

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .005.

FIGURE 1
Relation Between Stroke Number and Reaction Time for NS (Left) and CSL (Right) Participants

Note. NS = native speaker; CSL = Chinese as a second language; RT = reaction time.

To confirm the group difference in the stroke-
number effect, we took data from Tsang et al.
(2018) who reported RT data in a lexical deci-
sion task on 12,578 Chinese words from 504 Chi-
nese NSs.3 A subset of 63 of the 90 words in the
present study were included in their megastudy.
The range and mean stroke numbers of these 63
words were 5–25 and 15, respectively, and those
for familiarity rating were 2.9–10 and 8.5. We ran
a multiple regression analysis with lexical deci-
sion data from the 2018 study with stroke num-
ber and familiarity included in the model. There
was a significant effect for the familiarity variable,
t = 1.999, p = .05; but not for stroke number,
Nan Jiang, Fengyun Hou, and Xin Jiang
t = .193, p = .847. In contrast, the data from the
CSL speakers in the present study for the same set
of 63 words showed a significant effect for both
variables: familiarity, t = −5.068, p = 4.13e–06;
stroke, t = 1.985, p = .051. These results provided
further confirmation of the NS–CSL group differ-
ence in the stroke-number effect.
Finally, some previous studies have reported an
interaction between length and frequency (e.g.,
Tiffin–Richards & Schroeder, 2015) or between
stroke number and frequency (e.g., Leong et al.,
1987), with a length or stroke-number effect ob-
served only for low-frequency words. Interactions
of stroke number and the other two variables were
also included in the regression model to explore
this relationship. Only one significant interaction
was found—between stroke number and familiar-
ity for the CSL group (see Table 2). To explore
the nature of this interaction—that is, whether
the stroke-number effect was only present for low-
familiarity words, thus mimicking what has been
found in NS of English and Chinese—the 90 items
were divided into two sets, each with 45 items
based on their mean familiarity scores. The mean
familiarity scores for the high- and low-familiarity
sets were 9.6 (range 8.9–10.0) and 7.0 (range 2.9–
8.9), respectively. Regression analyses showed an
opposite pattern to the previous findings: The
high-familiarity items showed a significant stroke-
number effect, coefficient = 3.817e–01, standard
error = 1.291e–01, t = 2.958, p = .005; but the low-
familiarity items did not, coefficient = 2.000e–01,
standard error = 1.313e–01, t = 1.523, p = .131.
DISCUSSION
The current study produced three findings: (a)
there was a frequency and familiarity effect for
both NSs and CSL speakers, (b) only CSL speak-
ers showed a stroke-number effect, and (c) there
was an interaction of familiarity and stroke num-
ber among CSL speakers only.
Interpretation of the Findings
The finding of a familiarity effect and a fre-
quency effect is expected. Reliable familiarity ef-
fects and frequency effects have been found in
lexical decisions for both NSs and L2 speakers,
and when the two effects were compared, the
familiarity effect was usually more reliable (e.g.,
NSs: Connine et al., 1990; Gernsbacher, 1984; Ku-
perman & Van Dyke, 2013; L2: de Groot et al.,
2002; Lemhöfer et al., 2008). This is exactly what
was found in the present study. Thus, this find-
ing provided further confirmation for the role of
7
familiarity and frequency in affecting visual word
recognition performance.
The more important finding was the observa-
tion of a stroke-number effect among CSL learn-
ers while NSs showed no such effect under the
same experimental conditions (i.e., with the same
materials, task, and procedure). To our knowl-
edge, this is the first direct comparison between
CSL speakers and Chinese NSs in the stroke-
number effect. This finding suggests that CSL
learners seemed to adopt a Chinese word recogni-
tion process or strategy that is different from that
of NSs. Their visual word recognition is more ana-
lytical, considering one stroke or one component
of a character at a time. In contrast, NSs are more
likely to process multiple component strokes si-
multaneously, thus making them less susceptible
to stroke-number variations.
It should be pointed out that the lack of a
stroke-number effect for NSs in the present study
does not mean that NSs process all words holisti-
cally. As is shown in the earlier review of the liter-
ature, previous studies have produced conflicting
results regarding the stroke-number effect among
NSs. This inconsistency is likely to have arisen
from the words used in a specific study. A study
including a large number of low-frequency words
may be more likely to produce a stroke-number
effect than a study without many low-frequency
words. In the present study, the comparison of
NSs and CSL learners made it necessary for us to
concentrate on words of higher frequency and fa-
miliarity (a mean frequency of 104 occurrences
per million), which may have contributed to the
lack of a stroke-number effect among NSs. Hence,
we are by no means implying, categorically, that
NSs are always holistic and CSL speakers are al-
ways analytical in visual word recognition.
We also found an interaction between stroke-
number effect and familiarity among CSL speak-
ers. However, in contrast to the finding among
NSs of English and Chinese that the length or
stroke-number effect was only present for low-
familiarity words, separate analysis of CSL data
from high- and low-familiarity words showed an
opposite pattern. High-familiarity words showed a
stroke-number effect but the low-familiarity words
did not. This difference may reflect the fact that
low-familiarity items happened to have a smaller
stroke-number range (7 to 25 strokes) than the
high-familiarity items did (5 to 27 strokes). Given
its current t and p values (t = 1.523, p = .131),
increasing the range may produce a significant
stroke-number effect for low-familiarity items as
well. What is important about this interaction is
that it did not produce the same patterns as those
8 The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)
observed among English or Chinese NSs (Leong
et al., 1987; Tiffin–Richards & Schroeder, 2015).
This means that the CSL participants were not in a
transitional phase moving from analytical to holis-
tic processing in visual word recognition.
Theoretical and Pedagogical Implications
The demonstration of the use of a unique
analytical word recognition strategy among CSL
learners may not be surprising or significant by
itself. After all, Chinese instructors are known or
encouraged to take advantage of the component
strokes and radicals in teaching Chinese charac-
ters (e.g., Everson, 2011; Taft & Chung, 1999; Zhu
& Hong, 2005) and learners are known to employ
such analytical strategies in the process of learn-
ing Chinese characters (e.g., Hsiung et al., 2017;
Ke, 1998; Shen, 2005; Shen & Ke, 2007). However,
this finding is important because it raises a num-
ber of theoretical and pedagogical issues that have
received little attention in research and in class-
room instruction.
The first issue is whether CSL learners will
eventually adopt a native-like holistic processing
strategy as their proficiency and experiences
increase in the new language. Two different
scenarios may be considered. The first one is
to recognize such a possibility. As their expe-
riences increase, CSL learners may increase
their processing units, from strokes to radicals
and other stroke patterns and eventually to the
whole character. This transition may occur first
for high-frequency words. In this sense, reading
development is essentially the same between CSL
learners and Chinese NSs: Increasing reading
experience helps them move from more ana-
lytical processing to more holistic processing in
visual word recognition. Two caveats should be
noted, though. First, given limited language ex-
perience, CSL speakers are likely to continue to
use a combination of both processing strategies.
While more reading experiences will lead to in-
creasingly more Chinese words being processed
in a holistic fashion, thus improving reading
efficiency, a large number of low-familiarity words
may remain to be processed analytically. Second,
if it takes 2–3 years of reading experiences for
NS children to develop holistic reading, as shown
by Su & Samuels (2010), and Bijeljac–Babic
et al. (2004), it is likely to take much longer for
classroom CSL learners to achieve the same—
again due to their limited exposure to written
language. The recognition of the prospect of a
native-like processing strategy and the two caveats
are all motivated by a single principle of reading
development: Language experience determines
the employment of reading strategies.
A different scenario to suggest is that CSL
speakers will stick with the initial analytical pro-
cessing approach even as they gain more read-
ing experience in the language. As a result, read-
ing will remain less efficient for CSL learners.
There is little evidence available for this sugges-
tion at this point, but some parallel phenomena
have been reported. For example, adult L2 learn-
ers often associate L2 words with first-language
(L1) translations while learning new words, a phe-
nomenon well recognized and documented (e.g.,
Blum & Levenston, 1978; Ecke, 2015; Ellis, 1997;
Giacobbe, 1992; Ringbom, 1983). At the initial
stage of vocabulary acquisition, this is desirable
as L1 translations may serve both as an access
point for the word’s semantic and syntactic infor-
mation and as an anchor linking the new word
to the existing memory system, as Jiang (2000)
pointed out. Recent behavioral and electrophys-
iological evidence suggests that L1 translations
were automatically activated in L2 word recog-
nition even among advanced L2 speakers, indi-
cating the continued involvement of the L2–L1
links initially established (e.g., Jiang, Li, & Guo,
2020; Thierry & Wu, 2004, 2007; Wu & Thierry,
2010). The same phenomenon has been observed
in bimodal bilinguals whose first language was a
sign language (Meade et al., 2017; Morford et al.,
2011; Villameriel et al., 2016). These results sug-
gest that the initial mode or route of lexical ac-
cess is not abandoned with increased L2 expe-
rience. Returning to word recognition by CSL
learners, one may hypothesize that after the ini-
tial adoption of an analytical strategy, subsequent
reading experience may help reinforce the use of
this strategy rather than weaken and replace it.
We may consider this process to be similar to that
of “self-reinforcing” proposed by Iverson et al.
(2003) in explaining L2 speakers’ difficulty in de-
veloping native-like phonological representation.
The second issue concerns whether the find-
ing of analytical processing among CSL learners
in the present study represents a universal phe-
nomenon of L2 word recognition or reflects the
unique outcome of an emphasis on strokes and
radicals in CSL instruction. If we assume that the
whole-word representations of L2 words are usu-
ally weaker than those of L1 words, as suggested
by Lemhöfer, Koester, & Schreuder (2011), L2
learners may have to rely on analytical process-
ing to a greater extent than L1 speakers do. A
review of L2 word recognition studies showed a
small number of studies that produced different
results in this regard. De Groot et al. (2002) asked
Nan Jiang, Fengyun Hou, and Xin Jiang
Dutch–English bilinguals to perform lexical de-
cision and naming on words in their L1 Dutch
and L2 English. The study examined 18 predic-
tor variables, including length (operationalized in
terms of number of letters, phonemes, syllables,
morphemes), and included 440 words in each lan-
guage. A significant correlation between number
of letters and naming time was found for L2 En-
glish but not for L1 Dutch. This finding was con-
sistent with the view that L2 speakers are more
analytical in visual word recognition. In a sim-
ilar large-scale regression study involving 1,025
English words, Lemhöfer et al. (2008) tested L2
English speakers from three different L1 back-
grounds (French, German, and Dutch) and En-
glish NSs in a visual word recognition study. Fif-
teen predictor variables were examined includ-
ing the length variable (as assessed in the number
of letters, range: 3–5 letters) in this megastudy.
Both L2 speakers and NS showed a length effect.4
However, none of these studies was specifically de-
signed to compare the length effect between NSs
and L2 speakers. Thus, whether L2 speakers gen-
erally adopt a more analytic strategy, as shown
among the CSL speakers in the present study, is
yet to be explored.
The findings raise some important pedagogi-
cal questions as well. Developing efficient read-
ing skills is one of the primary goals of CSL in-
struction and L2 instruction in general. In light
of the finding that holistic processing is a more
efficient word recognition strategy in reading de-
velopment (e.g., Hawelka et al., 2010; Marinus
et al., 2015; Ziegler et al., 2003), language teach-
ers should strive to help learners develop holistic
word recognition strategies. However, an analyt-
ical approach that emphasizes the identification
of strokes, radicals, and their configurations has
been quite common and believed to be effective
in Chinese character teaching (e.g., Chang et al.,
2014; Everson, 2011; Hsiung et al., 2017; Ke, 1998;
Shen, 2004, 2005; Shen & Ke, 2007; Taft & Chung,
1999; Zhu & Hong, 2005). There is thus an ap-
parent conflict between the widely adopted ana-
lytical approach to character teaching and the de-
velopment of holistic word recognition strategies
required for efficient reading.
Do we have to abandon an analytical teach-
ing approach and teach new Chinese characters
more holistically? The answer is probably nega-
tive. Strokes are the basic units of the Chinese
script, and Chinese characters distinguish them-
selves in terms of what strokes are used and how
the strokes are configured in a two-dimensional
space. For CSL learners who are not familiar with
the script, stroke-based explanation and teaching
9
are likely to be inevitable. Furthermore, as re-
viewed in the introduction, analytical processing
is characteristic of all early readers, even in L1.
Thus, avoiding an analytical approach to charac-
ter teaching is neither practical nor necessary.
At the same time, one has to be aware of the
risk associated with analytical teaching. An ana-
lytical strategy adopted in the initial recognition
of a character may reinforce itself through sub-
sequent encounters with the character. For ex-
ample, a teacher may introduce the character 
‘mother’ as one of horizontal configuration with
the semantic radical  ‘woman’ on the left side
and the phonetic radical  ‘horse’ which indi-
cates its pronunciation on the right. Under this
circumstance, character recognition becomes a
process of examining the left and then the right
radical. A learner is likely to continue to do so
in subsequent encounters with the character. As
a result, they may become entrenched in the an-
alytical strategy. This is detrimental to efficient
reading.
A sensible solution to this dilemma is to develop
instructional interventions to help learners move
from analytical to holistic processing in a timely
manner. At least two issues have to be considered
in this process. The first is the identification of ef-
fective means to achieving this goal. As there are
no established methods for this new challenge,
there is a great deal of room for innovation and
exploration. For example, special training tasks
such as fast naming may be used where the char-
acters are displayed only briefly and the students
are asked to name the characters as quickly as
possible. Gradually decreasing the display dura-
tion, for example, from 1,000 milliseconds (ms)
to 800 ms to 500 ms, may encourage holistic char-
acter recognition by preventing learners from re-
lying on their analytical strategies. The second is
the timing of the intervention. Holistic training
before a character can be accurately recognized
may cancel the benefit of analytical processing
and cause setback and frustration. Holistic train-
ing may become less effective after a learner has
become entrenched in the analytical recognition
of a character. Both classroom innovation and sys-
tematic research are needed to discover the best
approach to facilitate the transition from analyti-
cal to holistic processing.
CONCLUSION
This study explored analytic versus holistic
visual word recognition among CSL learners
through the stroke-number effect. It represented
the first effort, to our knowledge, to demonstrate
10
analytical Chinese character recognition among
CSL learners through the comparison of CSL
learners with Chinese NSs under the same ex-
perimental settings. The findings raised a num-
ber of research and pedagogical issues that have
not received much attention in CSL research and
practice.
From a broader perspective, the present study
helped bring to the spotlight the topic of analytic
versus holistic word recognition among L2 learn-
ers in general. A great deal of research has been
done on this topic involving L1 learners, most of
whom seem to have no difficulty in developing ef-
fective word recognition strategies. It is L2 learn-
ers who are more likely to become entrenched in
a less effective analytical processing strategy, due
to factors such as limited reading experiences and
how an L2 is taught. However, this topic has re-
ceived little attention in L2 processing research.
Many questions await to be explored. For exam-
ple, it is not clear how factors such as length (or
stroke number) itself and L1 backgrounds may af-
fect the adoption of word recognition strategies.
Related to the length factor, New et al. (2006)
found that the patterns of the length effect varied
according to word length. For words of 3–5 letters,
longer words produced faster RTs. Length had no
effect on RTs for words of 5–8 letters, and length
had an inhibitory effect for words of 8–13 letters.
It would be interesting to explore whether word
length itself affects the length effect in the same
way among L2 speakers. Additionally, research by
Ziegler et al. (2001) demonstrated that the or-
thography of a language may affect how words
are processed. Shallow orthography is processed
more analytically and thus is associated with a
stronger length effect than a deeper orthography.
Ziegler et al. found a larger length effect among
German speakers than that among English speak-
ers when they were tested with the same set of
words in their respective languages. This means
that we have to consider an L2 learner’s L1 back-
ground when we examine analytic versus holis-
tic processing in L2. Investigating these issues will
certainly shed light on the more general issue of
how lexical processing in L2 is similar to or differ-
ent from that in L1.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are most grateful to Xuesong Wu for as-
sistance with data collection and to Guiling Hu, Hang
Zhang, and Phyllis Ni Zhang for assistance with partici-
pant recruitment.
The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)
NOTES
1 Researchers often use these three pairs of terms in-
terchangeably, but the terms analytic and holistic are used
more frequently in discussing Chinese word recogni-
tion (e.g., Kuo et al., 2014, 2015; Leong et al., 1987; Su
& Samuels, 2010). Su and Samuels suggested that it is
more appropriate to refer to the early reading strategy
used by Chinese readers as analytic rather than serial be-
cause Chinese characters have the shape of a square of
interconnected strokes rather than a sequence of letters.
We use analytic and holistic processing while discussing
Chinese word recognition and use serial and analytic on
the one hand and parallel and holistic on the other in-
terchangeably elsewhere.
2 Word length has also been used by some scholars
(e.g., Tsang et al., 2018) to refer to Chinese words that
differ in the number of component characters.
3 The data are available for free download at
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-
017-0944-0#Sec13
4 The discrepancy between the two studies—that is,
NSs showing a length effect in Lemhöfer et al. (2008)
but not in de Groot et al. (2002)—can be explained by
considering the difference in the number of words used
in the studies. The significantly larger number of words
used in Lemhöfer et al. meant it was more likely for the
study to have included low-frequency words than in de
Groot et al.’s study. The two studies provided different
frequency information in describing the materials—the
logarithm of frequency in de Groot et al. and frequency
counts per million in Lemhöfer et al.—so there was no
information to confirm this speculation.
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14 The Modern Language Journal 0 (2020)

APPENDIX

Chinese Words and Nonwords Used in the Study

Words
 ‘population’  ‘child’  ‘foreign language’  ‘court’
 ‘individual’  ‘friend’  ‘in advance’  ‘law’
 ‘afternoon’  ‘literature’  ‘in charge’  ‘difficulty’

 ‘afternoon’  ‘opportunity’ 
‘evening’  ‘government’
 ‘around the world’  ‘that year’  ‘exactly’  ‘late years’
 ‘winter’  ‘sequentially’  ‘tradition’  ‘minority’
 ‘fair’  ‘everywhere’  ‘knowledge’  ‘effect’
 ‘lies in’  ‘role’  ‘understand’  ‘egg’
 ‘lose’  ‘failure’  ‘current state’  ‘hope’
 ‘many’  ‘fall’  ‘number’  ‘insurance’
 ‘how many’  ‘confidence’  ‘a great deal’  ‘president’
 ‘form’  ‘television’  ‘refuse’  ‘business’
 ‘tool’  ‘breakfast’  ‘impression’  ‘forced to’
 ‘price’  ‘go overseas’  ‘competition’  ‘solve’
 ‘university’  ‘habit’  ‘after school’  ‘investigate’
 ‘in the mind’  ‘trash’  ‘food’  ‘information’
 ‘–ing’  ‘bread’  ‘still’  ‘lunch’
 ‘fruit’  ‘friendship’  ‘that way’  ‘read’
 ‘dust’  ‘newspaper’
 ‘receive’ 
‘semester’
 ‘sky’  ‘duty’  ‘photo’  ‘interesting’
 ‘unbelievably’  ‘following’  ‘care’  ‘restaurant’
 ‘news’  ‘avoid’  ‘road’
 ‘environment’  ‘pretty’  ‘difficult matter’
Nonwords
  
   

   
   
   
   
   

  
   
   
   
   
  

  

   
   
   
  
   
   
 


   
  

SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the
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