A New Way to Teach Chinese

Characters: Using Meaningful

Interpretation
Xiaoqiu Xu
Stanford University
 Background

 The Importance and Expansion of CFL

 Chinese Being a Difficult Language
 Chinese Character Being one of the Most
Difficult Elements in Chinese Language
 The most commonly-used strategy in learning
and teaching Chinese characters
Unraveling the Hidden Story: Chinese
Characters Are Not Random Symbols
 Although Chinese is termed as logography, in fact its characters
present both meaning and phonology and accordingly can be said to
be morphophonological (Leong, 1997) or “logographic-phonetic”
(DeFrancis as cited in Everson, 1989) or that a character be termed
a “morpheme-syllable” (Hoosain, 1991).
 Linguistically, the composition of Chinese characters are categorized
into six types: pictograms (象形), simple ideograms (指事),
ideogrammic compounds (会意), phono-semantic compound
characters (形声), phonetic loan characters (假借), and derivative
cognates (转注)(Wang 1993; Boltz, 1994).
 Among those, 80%-90% are phono-semantic compounds (形声字);
less than 1% are phonetic loan characters (假借)and derivative
cognates (转注).
 Theoretical Framework
 Anderson (2005)
 Memory for detail is available initially but is forgotten rapidly,
whereas memory for meaning is retained.
 Rote practice cannot significantly improve memory.

 Levels of Processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Brainerd, 2005)

 Deep processing refers to fully analyzing information in terms of
its meaning and importance. Shallow processing refers to
processing information only in terms of its surface structure.
 Deep processing results in significantly better long-term memory
as compared to shallow processing.
 Bransford (1989)
 Wisdom cannot be told. Self-manipulation is more effective than
teacher indoctrination in terms of acquiring knowledge, problem-
solving abilities and memory maintenance.
 Research Questions
1. Will the experimental group who learn to interpret the Chinese
characters in a meaningful way have a better immediate
learning outcome than the control group who do not obtain this
knowledge?
2. Do activities related to Chinese characters mediate and reduce
the effect of meaningful interpretation of Chinese characters?
3. Will the experimental group have a better retention of Chinese
characters than the control group?
4. Teacher instruction and student self-manipulation, which way is
more effective in terms of employing this method (meaningful
interpretation) in character learning?
 Experimental Design

 Subjects
 High School students, aged from 15 to 17 years
old
 14 in control group and 14 in experimental group
 Pretest (STAMP): Chinese proficiency level
ranged between novice mid to intermediate mid,
with most students falling into the category of
novice high
 Experimental Design
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

Content Character set 1 Character set 2 Character set 3 Test

(Quiz 1+2+3)
Step 1 Control Instruction Instruction Instruction
Group without without without
meaningful meaningful meaningful
interpretation interpretation interpretation

Experiment Teacher- Teacher-cued Students’

al Group instructed meaningful independent
meaningful interpretation meaningful
interpretation interpretation

Step 2 (both groups) Quiz 1 Quiz 2 Quiz 3

Step 3 (both groups) Related Activity Related Activity Related Activity

Step 4 (both groups) Quiz 1’ Quiz 2’ Quiz 3’

Linguistic Knowledge Taught: Composition of Chinese Characters
1. Pictograms (象形 xiàng xíng "form imitation")
Thought to be the oldest types of characters, pictographs were originally pictures of things. During the past
5,000 years or so they have become simplified and stylised.
e.g., 火，山，日，月，人
2. Simple ideograms (指事 zhǐ shì "indication")
Express an abstract idea through an iconic form, including iconic modification of pictographic characters.
e.g., 一， 二，三， 本，末
本 běn, "root" - a tree (木 mù) with the base indicated by an extra stroke.
末 mò, "apex" - the reverse of 本 (běn), a tree with the top highlighted by an extra stroke.
3. Ideogrammic compounds (会意 huì yì "joined meaning")
Two or more pictographic or ideographic characters are combined to suggest a third meaning.
木×3 = 森 人+木 = 休
木×2 = 林
sēn xiū
lín
two trees three trees a man leaning against a tree
→ grove → forest → rest

4. Phono-semantic compound characters （形声 xíng shēng "form and sound")

These are often called radical-phonetic characters. They form the majority of Chinese characters by far—
about 90%. A 形声 character is composed of phonetic element and a meaning element (“radical”, 部首 bu shou).
Pronunciation Compound
Meaning
扌 白 拍
hand bái pái "to clap, to hit"
穴 九 究
to dig into jiǔ jiū "to investigate"
日 央 映
sun yāng yìng "reflection"
Experimental Design: Character Set 1
Word Meaning Story
才
just
cái
放
To put, to let go
fang
心
heart
xin
认
To recognize
ren
Indicative
把 words; to
ba take or to
hold
To choose, to
选
elect;
xuan
choice
忙
Busy
mang

活
To live; alive
huo
 Results
 The experimental group who learn to interpret the Chinese characters
in a meaningful way have a better immediate learning outcome than the
control group who do not obtain this knowledge.

Table 1: Means (and Standard Deviations) for Quizzes Immediately after Learning the
Characters (Total of Writing=8; Total of Meaning=8).
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
Writing Meaning Writing Meaning Writing Meaning

Experimenta 4.57 (.85) 5.64 (.99) 4.39 (.76) 5.26 (.82) 5.32 (.70) 6.14 (.97)
l
Control 3.36 4.57 (1.2) 3.21 (.96) 4.19 (1.02) 3.00 (.98) 4.14 (1.08)
(1.22)
p-value .005 .016 .001 .005 .000 .000
 Results
 Activities related to Chinese characters do mediate
and reduce the effect of meaningful interpretation of
Chinese characters, but not in the student self-
manipulation condition.
Table 2: Means (and Standard Deviations) for Quizzes Immediately after the
Activity
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3

Writing Meanin Writing Meanin Writing Meanin

g g g
Experiment 7.04 6.79 6.43 5.64 7.00 6.92
al (.99) (1.1 (1.2 (1.5 (1.4 (1.4
7) 8) 0) 1) 9)
Control 6.54 6.04 5.54 4.68 4.75 4.29
(1.2 (1.6 (1.55) (1.7 (1.7 (1.6
9) 7) 4) 7) 8)
p-value .261 .181 .109 .128 .001 .000
 Results
Table 3: Means (and standard Deviations) for
Retention Test Four Days Later
 The experimental group (Total of Writing=24; Total of Meaning=24).
have a better retention Writing Meaning
of Chinese characters Experime 14.36 (3. 56) 15.57 (3.80)
than the control group, ntal

but the significant

difference only lies in Control 11.75 (3.28) 11.64 (4.31)
meaning, not writing.

p-value .055 .017

 Results
 Another interesting finding: people have different short-term and long-term
memories in terms of meaning and writing.
 Table 1: both groups did a better job in meaning than writing in all three
days
 Table 2: both groups did a better job in writing than meaning in all three
days.
 Table 3: students, again, remember meaning better than writing.
 Explanation:
 Students’ better performance in meaning than writing in the quiz
immediate after they learn the characters is due to the different difficulty
level of the writing and meaning of Chinese character. Within a small
amount of time, people remember the easy things better than difficult
things.
 Secondly, Students’ better performance in writing than meaning in the
quiz immediate after the activity is because during practice, their
attention was drawn to the harder element of knowledge. Paying
attention to the details made them do a better job in writing than the
ignored meaning part.
 Finally, no matter how well people have this short-memory in details
(character writing), their long-term memory is more likely to remember
the meaning rather than details. That’s why they did better in meaning
than writing four days later.
Things I’d Like to Fix

 Continue the experiment for another two days

by making the experimental group repeat
what they did on Day 3
 Choose comparable character sets each day
instead of selecting characters from Lesson 2
 Study the question on most appropriate
proficiency level for introduction of the
knowledge and method
Future Research: A Revised Design Based on a
Randomized Sample
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3, 4, 5 3 days 3 months later
late
r
Content Character set 1 Character set 2 Character set 3, Test A comprehesive
4, 5 (Quiz test on Chinese
1+2 character
Step Control Instruction Instruction Instruction +3+
1 Group without without without 4+5
meaningful meaningful meaningful )
interpretation interpretati interpretati
on on
Experiment Teacher- Teacher-cued Students’
al instructed meaningful independen
Group meaningful interpretati t
interpretation on meaningful
interpretati
on
Step 2 (both groups) Quiz 1 Quiz 2 Quiz 3, 4, 5

Step 3 (both groups) Related Activity Related Activity Related Activity

Step 4 (both groups) Quiz 1’ Quiz 2’ Quiz 3’, 4’, 5’

Questions?