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Existing empirical research has demonstrated the positive effects of flipping the classroom to improve student motivation and achievement by flipping in-class learning content to pre-class. However, the flipped classroom approach requires that students be engaged and motivated in the pre-class stage to ensure that the in-class learning activities run smoothly. Previous studies have highlighted the difficulties that students often encounter when trying to learn Chinese characters in Chinese language classes, especially those who are in the early stages of learning the language. Therefore, in this study, a gamified interactive e-book was developed and used in a flipped classroom for Chinese character learning. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, a pre-test and post-test control group experimental design was used. The participants were 90 s-grade students from a public primary school in Zhengzhou, China, who were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group: the students who used a gamified interactive e-book in a Chinese character learning flipped classroom (GIEFC group), the students who used a traditional flipped classroom (TFC group), and the students who used a traditional teaching classroom (TTC group). The experimental results indicated that students in the GIEFC group scored higher than those in the TFC and TTC groups in terms of learning achievements and motivation. In addition, the experimental results also demonstrated the positive effects of gamified interactive e-books in flipped classroom learning. Future research could explore a variety of different types of game elements as well as the extension of research to other subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This three-year longitudinal study investigated the orthographic knowledge development of Chinese characters in relation to lexical development among ethnic minority kindergarteners (N = 56) learning Chinese as a second language (CSL). The study examined the relative contribution of two types of orthographic knowledge (i.e. single character reading and radical awareness), and mental lexicon in Chinese character meaning recognition over the three years of preschool (K1-K3). Hierarchical regression analysis showed that single character reading at K1 and radical awareness at K2 were significant longitudinal predictors to later character meaning identification at K3, after controlling age and mental lexicon. Both single character reading and radical awareness were concurrently significant predictors to character meaning recognition at K3. The results indicated the longitudinal predicting effect of earlier component knowledge and radical awareness on subsequent character meaning identification. The finding supports the essential role of orthographic knowledge in Chinese character learning at early stage of ethnic minority leaners, and further establishes the mediated role of radical awareness between component knowledge and character meaning identification. Building on previous researches (e.g. Liu et al., 2007), this study illustrates that the component knowledge at early learning stage has a unique effect predicting the further development of character meaning identification and the learner framework for processing CSL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to decode new words of varying degrees of orthographic-phonological mapping is an important word recognition skill across languages. Chinese characters represent three types of phonetic regularity: regular, semi-regular, and irregular depending on the degree of reliability of the pronunciation information provided by the phonetic component. This study investigated whether adult non-native Chinese learners can use partial phonological information encoded in semi-regular characters to learn the pronunciations of new characters. A total of 55 college students, enrolled in an intensive Chinese program with varying proficiency levels, were taught the pronunciations of 18 novel compound characters of three phonetic regularity types over three trials. Non-native Chinese learners of advanced and intermediate levels learned the pronunciations of regular characters (initial-same and final-same), which contain full information about pronunciation, and semi-regular characters (initial-different, final-same), which contain partial information about pronunciation, significantly better than irregular characters (initial-different and final-different), which contain misleading pronunciation information. The performance difference between semi-regular and irregular characters decreased over trials. Novice students demonstrated limited ability in using partial information to learn to pronounce characters compared to intermediate and advanced students. These results provide implications for effective character instruction for adult learners of Chinese with varying Chinese proficiency levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is controversy around whether presenting sub-character units such as radicals and strokes are beneficial to L2 Chinese learning. The present study explored the effects of radical markings (i.e., marked radicals with different colors) and stroke order animations on learning Chinese characters. Forty Chinese L2 learners with native alphabetic languages were divided into high-and low-level groups. They were first required to learn Chinese characters under four conditions either: (a) presented radical markings with stroke animations; (b) presented no radical markings with stroke animations; (c) presented radical markings without stroke animations; or (d) presented neither radical markings nor stroke animations. After learning, the participants were given character recognition and charactermeaning matching tests. Results showed that the presentation of radical markings increased the participants' reaction times in the character recognition test and decreased their recognition accuracy. Moreover, presenting stroke order animations also decreased the participants' accuracy in recognizing characters. Beyond that, presenting radical markings and stroke order animations had no significant influence on character-meaning matching tests. These results indicate that providing radical and stroke information might interfere with character learning instead of facilitating character learning. The results suggest that excessive visual information introduced in the learning process may increase L2 learners' cognition load. Also, the findings contribute to theoretical arguments about the analytic and holistic processing of Chinese characters and the pedagogical implications for teaching Chinese as a second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study purports to investigate the effects of cue and instructor demonstration on Chinese as a second language (CSL) beginners' Chinese character learning performance, cognitive load, learning motivation and attitude. In the current research, 100 CSL beginners were randomly assigned to four experimental groups, i.e., instructor demonstration cued character, instructor demonstration non-cued character, non-instructor demonstration cued character and non-instructor demonstration non-cued character. Participants were instructed to watch an instructional video and subsequently complete a post-test and a questionnaire. The results show that (1) in the presence of instructor demonstration, the cued characters can noticeably reduce CSL beginners' cognitive load and enhance their learning attitudes towards character learning, enabling them to achieve better performance in character stroke but not in radical and structure, and (2) in the presence of cued characters, the instructor demonstration can noticeably reduce CSL beginners' cognitive load and increase their learning motivation and attitudes towards character learning but can not improve their character learning performance. The findings have significant implications for educators and instructional designers of Chinese and other non-alphabetic languages, such as Kanji and Hangul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Technology & Chinese Language Teaching is the property of Middle Tennessee State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Technology & Chinese Language Teaching is the property of Middle Tennessee State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Augmented Reality (AR) has been applied to education in a variety of subjects, but in comparison to AR in STEM education, research on integrating pedagogical designs with AR in language learning is less mature. This study presents an AR-supported Chinese character learning game designed for young learners and investigates its effects on learners' cognitive engagement in classroom learning. A total of 53 grade 2 students and two teachers from a Singapore government primary school participated in the study. The findings indicate an obvious improvement of students' levels of cognitive engagement in the AR-supported activities. Furthermore, compared with acquiring expert-created content knowledge, students are more continuously engaged in the learning activities designed for enabling self-generated contexts. Suggestions for future system design and pedagogical strategies of leveraging AR to engage young learners in language learning are proposed from this study. The study also provides some insight into how to investigate cognitive outcomes of AR-enabled learning design through analysing learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on Chinese dictation difficulties have focused on visual processing and phonological processing. In recent decades, attention has shifted to the ability to bind visual and auditory information. However, such studies are scarce and rarely focus on how this ability influences children’s learning and writing of Chinese characters. In this study, a group of children with Chinese dictation difficulties and a control group without such difficulties were instructed to learn rarely used Chinese characters under three learning modes: grapheme learning, syllable learning, and grapheme-syllable learning. Participants’ learning time and writing accuracy were recorded under each learning mode. Findings showed that under the grapheme learning mode, learning time and writing accuracy failed to differ significantly between the two groups. However, under the grapheme-syllable learning mode, the writing accuracy of children with dictation difficulties was significantly lower than controls. These findings, taken together, suggested that for children with dictation difficulties, learning graphemes and syllables at the same time did not improve their writing performance as much as the controls. Under the syllable learning mode, learning time and writing accuracy failed to differ significantly between the two groups. The findings contributed to a better understanding of the Chinese dictation difficulties.

The present study investigated the children's capabilities of utilizing analytic strategies in Chinese character learning using an associative pseudocharacter learning paradigm. The participants were 54 Chinese primary school children (26 second graders and 28 fifth graders) who completed a pseudocharacter learning task that was followed by a generalization test. Repeated measures ANOVA results showed a significant main effect of block and grade in pseudocharacter learning. One-sample t-test results indicated that generalization performance was significantly better than chance level in both grade levels. Findings from this study suggested that Chinese primary school children were able to identify print–sound–meaning regularities that were not explicitly taught and apply those rules to learning new pseudocharacters. They contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the character learning processes in Chinese children when encountering new characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the design of a digital Chinese character composition game with the paper-interface named as ARC (Augmented Reality-based Chinese Characters) and its implementation in a Singapore primary school. The ARC game is designed to help beginning Chinese as second language (L2) learners to develop Chinese orthographic knowledge and improve quality of collaboration. Underlying sociocultural perspectives of learning, it seeks to enable learners to complete the game collaboratively in classrooms, and in this process to build a deep understanding of linguistic knowledge in solving in-situ language-related problems that emerge in language use. The results of a quasi-experiment indicate that ARC is an effective system for improving Chinese character learning performance and collaborative learning quality. It suggests that the augmented paper, enabling natural interactions, allow more and potentially young students to engage with educational content and collaboration. The problematizing scaffold should be embedded in the game design to elicit more opportunities for collaborative dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes of those difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound characters include the phonetic component radicals that do not always sound the same as the phonetic radicals. These unique linguistic features of the Chinese language add even more challenges for learning of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Technology integration has been found to facilitate the teaching and learning foreign languages in many efficient and effective ways. To overcome the difficulties of learning CFL, the authors of this paper present a technology enhanced character teaching model consisting of four stages—radical awareness, enforcement of sound-meaning connections of characters, enforcement of sound-meaning-form connections of characters, and evaluation (REEE). This model was found to be effective in saving class time for interaction and in engaging students in the learning process. The authors suggest future studies are needed to further investigate the effectiveness of the REEE model of teaching and learning Chinese characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Technology & Chinese Language Teaching is the property of Middle Tennessee State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reports the impacts of spontaneous student grouping to develop young students' orthographic awareness in the process of learning Chinese characters. A mobile-assisted Chinese character forming game is used to assign each student a Chinese character component on their smartphones through a wireless network. Fifteen Singaporean students, all 3rd graders (10-year-old) studying Chinese as a second language (L2), were required to negotiate with their peers to form groups that could assemble eligible Chinese characters by using their respective components. The game process data and the transcriptions of focus group interviews were qualitatively analyzed in order to investigate the dynamics of student collaboration and competition during the games. In turn, the patterns of social interactions during the activities were identified, with a special focus on the varied impacts of the two grouping modes (allowing versus not allowing each student to join more than one group at one time) on the students' game habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of mixed sensory mode presentation for beginning and experienced learners of Chinese characters as second language was investigated. Experiment 1 found that inexperienced 7th graders performed better on meaning recall in the mixed visual–audio mode than the visual mode presentation, but the superiority of these two formats was reversed for pronunciation. Experiment 2 revealed that 2 years later, the same learners performed better on both pronunciation and meaning in the mixed mode than the single mode presentation. The mixed format enhanced experienced learners'' learning and different modes of presentation should be taken into account for second language instruction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To be literate in Chinese, one needs to learn over a thousand Chinese characters. This is obviously a challenging task for young learners. Psychological and developmental studies have provided evidence that awareness of structural regularities among the characters is important for its learning. Yet how this structural awareness can be enhanced in instruction is still not clear. Some worry that any explicit instruction about structures might actually increase the cognitive burden of the young learners, as they might be asked to think analytically about the characters, or to learn a meta-language that describes the structural principles underlying Chinese character composition. This paper discusses the nature of structural awareness in light of Gurtwitsch's general theory of awareness [Gurwitsch, A. (1964). The Field of consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duguesne University Press] and the theory of variation by Marton and S. Booth [(1997) Learning and awareness. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum] and F. Marton and A. Tsui [(in press) Classroom discourse and the spacing of learning. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum], and proposes how the awareness of Chinese character structures can be developed through experiencing systemic variations among related instances. It discusses how information and communication technologies can be used to provide useful support for this purpose. These ideas are implemented in a school-university collaboration project in Hong Kong and anecdotal evidence supports the conjecture of the authors. The structural awareness instruction can also be embedded naturally into meaningful language learning contexts to form an integrative model of teaching that is well received by teachers and students. The instruction does not appear to impose any additional cognitive load on the students. On the contrary, learners' interest and sensitivity in picking up the structural features of Chinese characters increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]