國立暨南國際大學資訊工程學系

碩士論文

A Web-based Supplementary Chinese Pictophonetic

Character Learning System in Component Methodology

部件教學法的線上輔助形聲字學習系統

指導教授：陳恆佑、張克寧

研究生：劉嘉俊

中華民國 一○一年十一月三十日
 致謝
轉眼間在暨大已經六年了，從大學和研究所的學習過程中，除了增進自己的專業

知識，當中也有很多甜酸苦辣的回憶，讓我的人生經歷更加豐富。首先我要感謝我的

父母親和姐姐在我學業過程中的支持與鼓勵，您們使我可以無憂無慮的繼續學業，雖

然我很少回家，可是每次回家都總感受到溫暖。接著要感謝指導教授陳恆佑老師和張

克寧老師，謝謝您們細心的指導，在研究的過程中，不厭其煩的給予我方向和建議，

使我獲益良多。還有衷心感謝口試委員蔡宜妮老師蒞臨指導，給予我系統上的建議，

也補足了我漢字理論的不足，使得此論文更加完整。

在暨大六年的生活中，首先我要謝謝女朋友汝顗，妳總會在我失落與徬徨無助的

時候，幫助我作出正確的決定和支持我走過所有的困難。更感謝她的爸爸翁建國先生、

媽媽潘虹朱女士和瑋笙，您們一直把我當成自家人關心與照顧，使埔里成為我第二個

家。特別是我在台手術住院期間，連續幾個月受到你們無微不至的照料，讓我迅速康

復，對於這份溫情，我真的是有說不盡的感謝。

在研究所的生活中，首先要感謝 205 學長，想念我們一起去健身、遊玩，有您的

這些日子總是樂趣無窮。特別感謝多媒體實驗室的同學文傑、Tima、Kevin、小美。

您們把苦悶的研究生活變得有趣，讓實驗室永遠充滿歡樂，讓我的研究生活不感到孤

單，感謝您們一直以來對我的協助，讓我成長不少，也永遠不會忘記大家一起在深夜

撰寫國科會計劃書的日子。

最後要感謝我在台灣留學期間的所有同學朋友們，您們使我的留學生活更加精彩

美滿，也因為有您們，我才茁壯成長。感謝您們這六年來給我的回憶，我必銘記於心！

劉嘉俊 謹致

國立暨南大學資訊工程學系

中華民國一○
中華民國一○一年十一月
論文名稱：部件教學法的線上輔助形聲字學習系統
校院系：國立暨南國際大學科技學院資訊工程學系 頁數：42
畢業時間：101 年 11 月 學位別：碩士
研究生：劉嘉俊 指導教授：陳恆佑、張克寧

摘要
在一整年華語的教學經驗中，我們發現華語學習者在學習漢字的過程中，會混淆

一些形狀或聲音相似的漢字，當中以形聲字居多，例如“情”和“請”。他們在所遇

到的困難激發我們設計一個形聲字的學習系統，針對形聲字的特色分成形旁和聲旁，

分別以象形動畫和聲音來輔助學習者更深入理解該字的意思和發音。

本系統提供部件的練習，以字頻為依據，讓學習者能學到擁有共同部件的高頻率

漢字，增加學習者的漢字量。通過練習，他們會更熟悉形旁和聲旁的變化，使他們學

會愈來愈多的常用字。系統在學習者練習的過程中，會自動紀錄學習者的學習過程，

並為學習者建立個人的漢字表，以方便他們複習漢字。

經過華語老師和學習者的使用後，他們認為此系統有效幫助初學者和中階學習者

學習形聲字，也能加深他們對形聲字的印象，並建立形旁和聲旁的意識。華語老師一

致認同此系統有效輔助他們在課堂上的教學，也能減輕華語老師備課時的負擔，並能

鼓勵自主學習者學習形聲字。

關鍵字：部件教學法、形聲字教學、線上學習、網頁多媒體
Title of Thesis: A Web-based Supplementary Chinese Pictophonetic Character Learning
System in Component Methodology
Name of Institute: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,
College of Science and Technology, National Chi Nan University
Pages：42
Graduation Time：11/2012 Degree Conferred：Master
Student Name：Filipe Jose Lao Advisor Name：Herng-Yow Chen, Keh-Ning Chang

Abstract
In a year of Chinese teaching experiences, we noticed that many learners suffered

from Chinese characters with the similar sound or shape — many of them are

pictophonetic characters such as “情” (Qíng) and “請” (Qǐng). Their difficulties

motivate us to design a character learning tool, which can turn a pictophonetic Chinese

character into two parts (meaning radical and sound radical) and present them with

animated pictures and sound. We hope learners can better understand the meaning and

sound of the character and the relationship with its components.

The system provides exercises to extend their vocabulary through learning a set of

new words which share the same component. New words are selected on the basis of

character frequency with another part change either radical or phonetic component, so that

learners trend to learn more common words.

The experimental result shows that our approach can help beginners and

low-intermediate learners to learn pictophonetic characters. Chinese teachers appreciate

our system for encourage autonomous learners.

Keywords: Component methodology, Pictophonetic character learning, E-learning, Web

multimedia
 Table of Contents
List of Figures .............................................................................................................. III

List of Table ................................................................................................................. V

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Background .................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Research Issues .............................................................................................. 2

1.3 Motivation ..................................................................................................... 2

1.4 Thesis organization ........................................................................................ 3

2 Overview of Chinese character .............................................................................. 4

2.1 Characteristic of character ............................................................................. 4

2.2 Formation of character................................................................................... 5

2.3 Pictophonetic Chinese character.................................................................... 6

2.4 Chinese Character cognition.......................................................................... 7

2.5 Character Association .................................................................................... 8

2.6 Chinese Character Frequency ........................................................................ 9

3 Related work ........................................................................................................ 10

3.1 eStroke ......................................................................................................... 10

3.2 Dragonwise .................................................................................................. 11

3.3 Whac-A-Mole .............................................................................................. 12

3.4 ACCESS ...................................................................................................... 13

4 System Framework ............................................................................................... 14

I
 4.1 System structure .......................................................................................... 14

4.2 Character decomposition ............................................................................. 15

4.3 Character Exercises ..................................................................................... 18

5 System Interface ................................................................................................... 19

5.1 Lecture review ............................................................................................. 20

5.2 Character Explanation ................................................................................. 21

5.3 Character Exercise ....................................................................................... 25

5.4 Learners’ Character List .............................................................................. 27

6 Evaluation............................................................................................................. 29

6.1 Participants .................................................................................................. 29

6.2 Online Language Learning Experiences...................................................... 29

6.3 System Evaluation ....................................................................................... 30

6.4 Participant’s Comments............................................................................... 35

7 Conclusion and Future work ................................................................................ 36

7.1 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 36

7.2 Future work ................................................................................................. 36

References ................................................................................................................... 38

Appendix 1: User Survey ............................................................................................ 41

II
 List of Figures
Figure 1 Pictophonetic characters components -------------------------------------------------------- 6

Figure 2 The character association of “可” ------------------------------------------------------------- 8

Figure 3 The interface of eStroke ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 10

Figure 4 The components exercises of character ---------------------------------------------------- 11

Figure 5 The screenshot of Whac-A-Mole game ---------------------------------------------------- 12

Figure 6 The screenshot of ACCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------ 13

Figure 7 The system architecture ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 14

Figure 8 Building Chinese character component Database --------------------------------------- 15

Figure 9 Different form of the radical “人” ---------------------------------------------------------- 16

Figure 10 The flowchart of decompose Chinese character ---------------------------------------- 17

Figure 11 Using Components information for Exercise ------------------------------------------- 18

Figure 12 The flowchart of student review lecture ------------------------------------------------- 19

Figure 13 The Login interface --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19

Figure 14 The interface of Chinese lectures ---------------------------------------------------------- 20

Figure 15 Review lecture interface --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21

Figure 16 Character learning mode -------------------------------------------------------------------- 22

Figure 17 Mouse move over the component --------------------------------------------------------- 23

Figure 18 Information of component from my system--------------------------------------------- 24

Figure 19 The suggestion of correlate character ----------------------------------------------------- 25

Figure 20 The hints of exercise ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26

Figure 21 Learn from mistakes -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26

Figure 22 Learners’ character lists ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 28

III
Figure 23 Survey question regarding the spending time on web -------------------------------- 29

Figure 24 Survey question regarding online language learning experiences ------------------ 30

Figure 25 Survey question regarding system interface -------------------------------------------- 30

Figure 26 Survey question regarding “different color component” function------------------ 31

Figure 27 Survey question regarding “Animation of radical” function ------------------------ 31

Figure 28 Survey question regarding the helpful of “Radical meaning” ----------------------- 32

Figure 29 Survey question regarding “pronunciation phonetic component” ------------------ 32

Figure 30 Survey question regarding the helpful of Exercise ------------------------------------ 33

Figure 31 Survey question regarding the useful of Individual character list ------------------ 33

Figure 32 Survey question regarding suitable for teacher to use in the class ----------------- 34

Figure 33 Survey question regarding suitable for students to study by themselves --------- 34

IV
 List of Table
Table 1 Chinese character classification------------------------------------------------------------5

V
 1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Last whole year, I was a teacher assistant of a Chinese class that teaches foreigners to

learn Chinese as their second language. The class was set up by Language Teaching and

Research Center of my university. The learners take the Chinese class once a week and 2

hours for each time. They come from different countries, but have the same objective,

learning Chinese to integrate into Taiwan society.

Since the ages, cultures and Chinese language proficiency among learners are varied,

we choose the lecture material carefully. Many different kinds of authentic material have

been used in our class, such as podcast, idiom stories and songs.

Authentic material means using actual examples of language produced by native

speakers for some real purpose of their own rather than using language produced and

designed solely for the classroom. The advantages of authentic material [Martinez 02] are:

1. The same piece of material can be used in different ways if the context is different.

2. They can encourage reading because they are more to likely contain topics that may

interest learners.

3. Books, songs and stories contain a wide variety of text types and language styles

that are commonly used in our daily life.

All the authentic materials are added multimedia elements to help learners understand the

content.

1
 1.2 Research Issues
In our Chinese class, we used authentic material as our lecture material. We had added

multimedia elements to help learners understand the materials. When they had understood

the meaning of the material, we encouraged learners to share their idea of this material in

Chinese. We had good interaction during the class. In the process of helping foreigners to

learn Chinese, we had got feedback from Chinese learners. From these feedback, I realized

foreigners have some problems on recognizing Chinese characters.

1. They are easily confused by different characters with the same sound.

2. They can recognize the same component appearing in different characters but can

not deduce the rough meaning of them.

The above problems give us the hints to improve the Chinese character learning.

1.3 Motivation
Based on the experience I gained from helping foreigners to learn Chinese, I hope to

design an after-class learning system for foreigners to review the lectures and learn

Chinese characters at the same time. They learn Chinese not just by taking the class, but

also by improving their learning of character at home by themselves.

Among the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, the ability to perceive

Chinese characters always plays an important role. Chinese character cognition is the basic

ability for Chinese learners. In the intermediate or the level above, learners need to

understand the formation principles of Chinese characters, including the radical

component’s meaning and the phonetic component’s pronunciation [Shen05].

Research has proved that multimedia can help knowledge acquisition, especially in

language learning. Researchers believe that when learners contact the information in

2
visual format and text format, their brain will select, organize and integrate all the

information and store it into learners’ brain in their own way. Different types of media

can excite different imagination from our brain, thus improving the efficiency of

language learning [靳洪剛 03].

With the rapid growth of the Internet, web-based systems are widely used to support

knowledge acquisition, especially in language learning. Learning Chinese on web-based

system is the tendency over the world. By the convenience of network, we hope learners

will continue learning Chinese after class by watching the lecture videos and reading the

context through our Chinese learning system. Learners can choose the pictophonetic

characters for further learning to improve their Chinese.

1.4 Thesis organization

The remainder of this thesis is organized as follows. In chapter 2, I am going to

introduce the characteristic, formation and cognition of Chinese characters. Chapter 3

describes the related work of Chinese learning systems by other scholars. Chapter 4

introduces the architecture of the system. Chapter 5 shows the features of my system.

Chapter 6 and 7 show the feedback from the users and concludes my work respectively.

3
 2 Overview of Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms. It is the oldest writing system still being used in the

world. The amount of Chinese characters is almost ten thousands. Most of them are minor

graphic variants only encountered in historical texts [Wiki].

2.1 Characteristic of character

Song and Gu have summarized the characteristic of Chinese characters as follows[宋業

瑾 03].

1. Complicated structure of words. Basic strokes are combined to form primary characters

which can also be combined to form more complex characters.

2. Strong iconicity and artistic. Chinese characters are ideographs and have strong

iconicity. They give people strong stimulation and wonderful imagination than

phonography.

3. Monosyllable pronunciation. Different Chinese characters can have the same

pronunciation but various meaning.

The characteristics of Chinese character confuse not only the foreigners but also

native learners. When learners have to learn a different type of language system, their

native language will guide them to use their way to learn the new language. We have

to provide a systematic method with which learners can raise their learning efficiency.

4
 2.2 Formation of character
The earliest known Chinese texts are written in the Oracle bone script. It has a little

difference in functionality from modern characters. The presumed methods of forming

characters were first proposed at 100 AD by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen (許慎), whose

dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字) divides the script into six categories, the liùshū (六

書 ). These six categories are Pictograms, Ideograms, Ideogrammic compounds,

Pictophonetic, Transformed cognates and Rebus [Wiki].

The percentage of each category in total Chinese characters is shown in table 1.

Pictophonetic and Ideogrammic compounds constitute almost 95% of Chinese characters.

Therefore, these two categories are mainly used in our daily life.

Category Percentage of characters(approximation)

Pictophonetic 82%

Ideogrammic compounds 13%

Pictograms 4%

Ideograms Few (less than 1%)

Transformed cognates Few

Rebus Few

Table 1 Chinese character classification [Wiki]

Most of the Pictograms and Ideograms are single characters. Most of the Pictophonetic

and Ideogrammic compounds symbolically combine two or more than two pictograms or

ideograms to form a new single character.

In teaching point of view, decomposing the characters into meaningful component can

help learners be deeply impressed of the characters.

5
 2.3 Pictophonetic Chinese character
Over 80% of Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters, most of which are

evidently composed of radical component and phonetic component. On the figure below,

the Chinese characters are 河 hé "river”, 沖 chōng "flush” and 滑 huá "slippery". All these

characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes, which is a simplified pictograph

for a river, indicating that the characters have a semantic connection with water. The

right-hand side is a phonetic indicator. Most of the pronunciation of phonetic components

is related to the pronunciation of that character.

Figure 1 Pictophonetic characters components

From teaching point of view, teachers must make use of the characteristic of

pictophonetic characters to help learners to increase the awareness of pictophonetic

characters. Learners can enhance their ability of analyzing new Chinese characters.

6
 2.4 Chinese Character cognition
There are many different language systems in the world. Ziegler & Goswami put

forward a Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory [Ziegler05]. For all language system, the

beginning learners can develop a matching principle for the character form and the

pronunciation by accumulating the language experience. With the increasing vocabulary,

Chinese learners can gradually grasp the phonetic awareness by themselves. This

awareness can help Chinese learners to guess the pronunciation and meaning of a new

character easily.

In component methodology, teaching Chinese characters by separating the radical

part and phonetic part can enhance the awareness of radical and phonetic part. It is

easy for Chinese learners to master the form of Chinese character [黃沛榮01]. For

example, learners have already learned “打” and “共”. By giving proper hints to

learners, learners can easily learn the form of “拱”. From learners’ point of view, it is

just the combination of two components “扌” and “共”.

Using multimedia techniques to enhance the characteristic of radical meaning and

phonetic assists learners to recognize Chinese characters more efficienctly [Shen07]

[顏妙旋02] [溫瓊怡03]. The exercises can allow learners to practice different

combination of components and have deep impression on the form of Chinese

characters.

7
 2.5 Character Association
A character association is a group of Chinese characters that have the same radical or

phonetic component. The component methodology by using character association can help

Chinese learners classify and recognize the same form of Chinese characters. This

correlation of Chinese characters is also a kind of narrow-learning. The associated

characters can help learners to remember the form of characters and increase the learning

efficiency.

Figure 2 The character association of “可”

For example, a character association of “可” is shown above. A simple Chinese

character can combine with different radical components to form different compound

characters. Most of the characters with the same radical component have the similar

meaning, and also most of the characters with the same phonetic component have the

similar pronunciation. If Chinese learners learn characters by using character association,

the number of their familiar characters will increase rapidly. That will increase the Chinese

cognition experiences of learners.

8
 2.6 Chinese Character Frequency
Ministry of Education of Taiwan had released a table of Chinese character frequency

that count the times of character appearance from Chinese lecture[字頻總表]. This table

including almost five thousands Chinese characters shows us which characters are more

frequently used and are more suitable to be included in teaching material. Frequently used

Chinese characters appear in daily life and are very important for Chinese learners.

Learning high frequency characters assists them to easily read Chinese contexts in their

daily life [黃沛榮 01]. Learning higher frequency of Chinese character can also enhance

the opportunity to use them. The system also provides exercises of the correlation

characters. The questions of the exercises are based on the frequency of characters.

9
 3 Related work
There are many web-based languages learning systems on the Internet. Although each

has its own design focus, they all want to assist learners to learn languages more efficiently.

The following will describe several language learning systems and their features.

3.1 eStroke
EStroke provides the stroke order of every Chinese character in a high quality stroke

sequence animation. It also shows the related phrase of that character.

This system aimed to help learners to memorize the stroke sequence and recognize a

Chinese character. However, stroke order is meaningless for foreigners, so it is hard for

them to memorize the sequences.

Figure 3 The interface of eStroke

10
 3.2 Dragonwise
Dragonwise is built by Hong Kong University, designed primary for students of Hong

Kong. It aims at different formation of Chinese characters and provides interactive

character component games for users. The game had separated the character into

components. Users can drag the components to the right position. The aim of this game is

to practice the formation concept of Chinese characters. But the game didn’t focus on the

characteristics of pictophonetic characters to let learners be deeply impressed of the

components. Their database of characters is too small that limits the effect for Chinese

learners whose mother language is English. If the game offers detail meaning of a character

in Chinese and English, it will be easy for learners to understand [Lam04].

Figure 4 The components exercises of character

11
 3.3 Whac-A-Mole
The students of National Chengchi University have built an interactive game for

computer assisted learning of Chinese characters. The game utilizes the cues of links

between the sounds and the sub-lexical components of the Chinese characters. It is based

on a popular game, Whac-A-Mole. Figure10 shows a screenshot. When the player hits a

mole, the system will read the character to the player so that the player can hear the

pronunciation of the hit character. The acoustic feedback offers the link between the

grapheme and the related pronunciation [Liu11].

Figure 5 The screenshot of Whac-A-Mole game

12
 3.4 ACCESS
ACCESS (Advanced Chinese Character Electronic Search System) is a Chinese

context and character search tool developed by National Taiwan Normal University

Mandarin Training Center. This tool has already decomposed characters into components.

Learners can search by components for a Chinese character. It is a perfect system for a

teacher to prepare the teaching material for a Chinese character. Although the system

provides much information about a character, it is hard for foreign learners to pick up the

meaning and the pronunciation of Chinese characters. This system also provides sufficient

data for our system to analyze Chinese characters [ACCESS].

Figure 6 The screenshot of ACCESS

13
 4 System Framework
Reviewing the lecture material after class can strengthen the awareness of a language.

Unfortunately, there is no tutor beside learners when they are reviewing the lecture. So I

proposed an After-Class Chinese character learning system that allows the Chinese learners

to review the lecture material after class.

As the learners review the lecture after class, they may read some characters on the

context of which they forget the meaning and pronunciation. If there is a system can

enhance pictophonetic characteristics to help learners understand that character. That can

increase the efficiency of character learning.

4.1 System structure

Figure 7 The system architecture

The above figure shows the system architecture. First, the character component data,

meaning, pronunciation, frequency and example are collected into the database. When

Chinese learners review the lecture after class and choose the unfamiliar Chinese character,

the system sends the HTTP request to the server which analyzes the data from database and

sends back the character component result to client. After decomposing the Chinese

14
character, the server provides information of the components. For a radical component, the

system provides its meaning and the animation of radical revolution. For a phonetic

component, the system provides its pingyinn and pronunciation. At last, the server will

provide an exercise for the radical and phonetic component. The exercise helps learners

learn more Chinese characters through associated characters. This exercise can guide

Chinese learners to learn the same character family repeatedly. In the process of exercises,

the system will record the Chinese characters which learners have learned. This record is

used to prepare the exercises and can be checked by learners.

4.2 Character decomposition

The system has built a database for Chinese character components. All the Chinese

character component information are retrieved via HTTP protocol from ACCESS.

ACCESS returns the necessary data to my system, such as component data, radical,

pingyin.

Figure 8 Building Chinese character component Database

Each component has its unique number. For example, = 301, =440. The

component data stored into character database help separate a character into its radical and

phonetic part hierarchically. This data also helps build the radical table for a Chinese

character.

15
 人 045
人
亻 046
Radical Component

Figure 9 Different form of the radical “人”

A radical table can assist the system to find out the radical component. Some radical

has more than one form. Building the radical table including different forms of a radical is

necessary for the system to identify which radical component is in the character. The

example of different form of a radical is shown on Figure 9.

The ACCESS system provides us Chinese characters’ component data. For example,

“著” has three components. That is 艹(204), 耂(180) and 日(209). However, the system

has to know which part is the radical and which part is the phonetic component. The

correct radical table can assist the system to decompose Chinese character into radical and

phonetic component. The following figure depicts the data flow of decomposing a Chinese

character.

16
 Figure 10 The flowchart of decompose Chinese character

First, the learners select character from the context. The system receives the HTTP

request from the learner and searches the radical of “ 著 ” in the radical database

automatically. The returned radical component is “艹” (204). The system has to make sure

the rest of the component is a Chinese character, because fragmentary phonetic component

is hard to assist learners to understand. In this example, the rest of the component data are

“180, 209”. The component “耂” (180) can not match the character from database, thus the

system identifies that is not a meaningful character. Then, the system searches the “180,

209” to confirm the rest of the component data combined is a Chinese character

automatically. The result returned from character database is “者” (180, 209), so “者” is

the phonetic component of the character “著”. At last, the system decomposes the character

“著” and gets the radical component: “艹” and phonetic component: “者” respectively.

This information is useful for subsequent annotations.

17
 4.3 Character Exercises
The information of components can be used in teaching or preparing some exercises

for the radical and the phonetic component.

Figure 11 Using Components information for Exercise

The system uses the radical and phonetic component information to prepare further

studies for Chinese learners. In order to find out the similar characters which have the

common component for further studies, the system searches the components in the

character database respectively. The result will come out with the same component of

characters. For the purpose of learning Chinese character gradually, the system refers to the

character frequency table. The similar characters are used to design exercises.

18
 5 System Interface
This chapter describes and introduces the feature of the Chinese character learning

system. The figure below shows the flow of lecture reviewing.

Figure 12 The flowchart of student review lecture

Each Chinese learner has an account which is used for identification and recording

individual learning process in the system. The following figure shows the login interface of

our Chinese learning system.

Figure 13 The Login interface

19
 5.1 Lecture review
After logged in the Chinese learning system, all the lectures are in the front page. The

learners can choose one of the lectures to review.

Figure 14 The interface of Chinese lectures

All of our authentic materials are embedded with multimedia elements to help

learners understand the context. When learners review a lecture with a browser at home,

the context will synchronize with the video line by line. The review interface is shown in

figure 15.

20
 Figure 15 Review lecture interface

5.2 Character Explanation

When reviewing a lecture, learners can choose a bigger bold character for further study.

In order to increase learners’ Chinese vocabulary, the teacher may suggest learners to study

the bigger bold characters which are pictophonetic characters.

21
 Figure 16 Character learning mode

In the above figure, the learner has chosen a Chinese character and the system gives

the stroke order animation or pictogram to assist the learners to understand the character.

This explanation page provides the pronunciation, pinyin and meaning for basic character

learning. The decomposition of the character into radical component and phonetic

component was shown on the middle part of the page automatically. The components are in

different color. Red is used to indicate radical component. Blue is used to indicate phonetic

component. Different colors of components can enhance learners the impression of the

component. Then, the system uses the characteristics of radical and phonetic component to

give the correct information of that component.

22
 Figure 17 Mouse move over the component

In figure 17, the learners’ mouse moves over the component of the Chinese character

to get the characteristics information of that component. That information can enhance

learners the impression of the radical component and phonetic component. As figure 18

shows, the system then provides the animation and the meaning of the radical. For the

phonetic component, the system provides pinyin and pronunciation.

23
 Figure 18 Information of component from my system

The animation of ancient pictogram revolution assists learners to understand the

formation of radical. Below the animation is the radical meaning that can help learners to

understand the roughly meaning of that character. As learners’ mouse put over the

component, the pronunciation of the phonetic component comes out to help learner to

understand that character pronunciation. Chinese pinyin is shown for learners to remember

the pronunciation of that component. This methodology helps learners to distinguish

different component and that characteristic of that character.

24
 5.3 Character Exercise
There are two exercises for learners to practice. These exercises aim to let learners try

different combination of radical and phonetic. When learners click the components of the

character, depending on the component clicked, either radical exercise or phonetic exercise

is popped out.

Figure 19 The suggestion of correlate character

In the exercise, the question is set up according to the Chinese character frequency. So

learners can learn the most common used Chinese characters. The meaning and

pronunciation give learners the hints to guess what the character is. There are many radical

or phonetic choices on left hand side. When the mouse moves over the choices, the hint

will appear to help learners to guess. Learners can preview the answer of the choice to

choose the most suitable answer. The hints of radical components are animation of

pictogram and meaning. The hints of phonetic components are pingyin and pronunciation.

Both help learners to learn the meaning or pronunciation of different part of components.

25
 Figure 20 The hints of exercise

Chinese learners may make mistakes in the exercise, so the system let them learn from

mistakes. If the learner guesses a wrong answer in the exercise, the learners can click the

wrong answer to get more information of that character. The information includes pinyin,

pronunciation, meaning and the Chinese and English example sentence of this character.

Figure 21 Learn from mistakes

26
 In order to let learners learn the more difficult Chinese character later, the system

records the setup of the question. In the beginning of exercises, the high frequency Chinese

characters are chosen. As the learner is continuing using this system, they will learn much

harder characters in the exercises.

The purpose of the exercises is to enhance learners the concept of component.

Learners can try different combinations of components to form the new characters and

increase their amount of Chinese character through doing exercises.

5.4 Learners’ Character List

The system will record learners’ activities when learners do the exercises. The log

records which character that learners have learned. If a learner gives the correct answer in

the exercise or clicks the example from the wrong answer, the system will assume the

learner has learned or understood this character and record it into the learner’s character

list. Learners can review which characters they have learned before. This individual

character list let them to know their own learning progress.

27
 Figure 22 Learners’ character lists

The character list contains the characters which learners have learned and include

pingyin and meaning of the characters. It is convenient for learners to review their learning

process.

28
 6 Evaluation
6.1 Participants
A total of 15 participants took part in evaluation. They were asked to use the system

for approximately three lectures, and then filled the online questionnaire. Six respondents

are foreigners and they are Chinese learners. Other respondents are Chinese teachers. Some

comments they provided are helpful for us to improve our system.

6.2 Online Language Learning Experiences

Most of the participants spend more than five hours on the Internet every day, so we

may assume that most of them have the experience of web surfing and they can absorb

information through the Internet.

How many hours do you usually spend on web

every day？？

more than 8 hours

5~8 hours

3~5 hours
Participants

1~3 hours

Less than 1 hour

0 2 4 6 8

Figure 23 Survey question regarding the spending time on web

29
 Do you have any language learning
？
experiences by computer technology？

No

Participants

Yes

0 5 10 15

Figure 24 Survey question regarding online language learning experiences

The above figure shows that most of the participants have the experiences of language

learning by computer technology, so they don’t feel unfamiliar in language learning by

using computer.

6.3 System Evaluation

Eight of the participants said the system interface is very friendly or friendly to use.

Four of the participants responded that the system interface is not friendly to use.

System interface is friendly to use.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral
Participants
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 2 4 6 8

Figure 25 Survey question regarding system interface

30
 The “different color component” function helps
you distinguish radical and phonetic.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 26 Survey question regarding “different color component” function

Regarding using color to distinguish the different components, all of the students and

seven of Chinese teachers consider this function can help them to distinguish radical and

phonetic component.

The “Animation of radical revolution” function

helps you learn the radical component.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 27 Survey question regarding “Animation of radical” function

Eleven of the participants are satisfied with the animation of radical revolution as it

can help them to understand the radical component. Only one Chinese teacher considers

this function is not useful for learners.

31
 The “Radical meaning” function helps you roughly
understand the meaning of character

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 28 Survey question regarding the helpful of “Radical meaning”

Eight of the participants agree that the radical meaning is useful. Some of the

participants consider the radical meaning is normal useful in understanding the

approximate meaning of character.

The “Pronunciation of phonetic component” can

help you pronounce the character better.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 29 Survey question regarding “pronunciation phonetic component”

The “pronunciation of phonetic component” function acquire six of the participants

agree that is helpful for them to pronounce the Chinese character, but most of the

participants give neutral or negative feedback.

32
 The Exercise can help you learn more similar
characters.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 30 Survey question regarding the helpful of Exercise

Thirteen of the participants, either Chinese teachers or learners, agree the exercise can

help learners to learn more similar characters. None of the participants give negative

feedback.

The Individual character list is useful for you to

review character which you have learned already.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral Chinese Teachers

Chinese Learners
disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 31 Survey question regarding the useful of Individual character list

From user feedback, the individual character list is useful for learners to review their

character. They can know their learning process

33
 This system is suitable for teachers to teach in
class.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral
Chinese Teachers

Disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 32 Survey question regarding suitable for teacher to use in the class

The last two questions are only asking to Chinese teacher and the mainly purpose are

used to estimate whether our system is suitable for Chinese teachers to teach in Chinese

class and after class. The results are positive so it seems that this system can help them

teach. Only one or two Chinese teachers gives neutral responses.

This system is suitable for students to study by

themselves.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral
Chinese Teachers

Disagree

Strongly disagree

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 33 Survey question regarding suitable for students to study by

themselves

34
 6.4 Participant’s Comments
The participants generally give positive results for the survey questions. They also

provide some suggestion for us improve our system. Users think that the purposes of

windows are not clear and should have instructions beside them, and the lectures material

should be classified into different categories. The exercises are interesting but a little bit

hard to operate.

35
 7 Conclusion and Future work
7.1 Conclusion
This thesis proposes a system for Chinese learners’ review lecture by using computer

at home. Our system is designed to let Chinese learners learn Chinese pictophonetic

character by themselves. The system can separate the pictophonetic characters into radical

and phonetic components. In character learning mode, the system provides Chinese

learners appropriate hint. It helps Chinese learners to distinguish and understand the

meaning of components. The system also provides exercises for learners to practice

different combination of different components. From this exercise, learners can acquire

more Chinese pictophonetic characters and have their own characters lists to review.

According to the user feedback, most of the users give us positive responses. Few of

them consider the system interface is not friendly to use. Most of the users agree that the

system can help them to learn pictophonetic Chinese characters. However, few of the

pictophonetic characters lost their original component characteristics after long time of

revolution such as“校”and “他”. Those characters are not suitable to use this

methodology to assist learners. Chinese teachers also believe that this system can help

Chinese learners to acquire more Chinese characters.

7.2 Future work

The feedback from users shows that our system still has weaknesses. We hope to share

these experiences of development language learning system to other scholars.

1. Our Chinese learning system works on desktop computers. If we can catch up

with the tendency of mobile devices, learners can use our system everywhere.

36
 2. The aim of our system is pictophonetic characters. If our system can include all

kind of Chinese characters, it will be a powerful learning tool for Chinese

learners.

3. Similarity characters also confuse Chinese learners, including the pronunciation

and the shape of characters. For example, “已” and “己” are very similar

characters. If we can analyze similarity of characters deeply, we can apply

different methodology to help Chinese learners.

I hope the above suggestions can help scholars to development better Chinese learning

system and make contribution to Chinese teaching.

37
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Internet Related

[字頻總表] 字頻總表--台灣教育部,
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[Martinez 02] Martinez, A.G. (2002) Authentic Materials: An Overview on

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[Wiki] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

40
 Appendix 1: User Survey
Part One: Personal Information
1. What is your mother language?

□Less than one hour per day.

□One to three hours per day.

2. How many hours do you usually spend on web? □Three to five hours per day.

□Five to eight hours per day.

□Over eight hours per day.

3. Do you have any language learning experience by

□Yes □No
computer technology?

4. Have you ever seen this kind of system before? □Yes □No

Part Two: About the system

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly Agree

1. System interface is friendly to use. □ □ □ □ □

2. The “different color” function helps you

□ □ □ □ □
distinguish radical and phonetic.

3. The “Animation of radical revolution” function

□ □ □ □ □
helps you learn the radical component.

41
 Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly Agree
4. The “Radical meaning” function helps you roughly
□ □ □ □ □
understand the meaning of character.

5. The “Pronunciation of phonetic component” can

□ □ □ □ □
help you pronounce the character better.

6. The Exercise can help you learn more similarity

□ □ □ □ □
character.

7. The Individual character list is useful for you to

□ □ □ □ □
review character which you have learned already.

8. This system is suitable for teachers to teach in

□ □ □ □ □
class.

9. This system is suitable for students to study by

□ □ □ □ □
themselves.

Suggestions:

42