The Functional Role of Semantic Radicals in Chinese Characters - Case Study Example

RESEARCH REPORT TITLE Second Language Learning: The Functional Role of Semantic Radicals in Chinese Characters RESEARCHER Ms./Mrs./Mr. (insert your names here) Department of (please insert your department here) Faculty of (please insert your faculty here) (Insert your college or university name here) SUPERVISOR Start with his/her title then his/her names (for instance Professor Bob Kelly) Department of (insert the name of the department your supervisor belongs) Faculty of (please insert his/her faculty here) (Insert college or university name here where your supervisor is attached to here) Student number: (insert your number here Lecturer: (insert your lecturer’s names here, remember start with the title) Contents Contents 1 1.0.Abstract 1 2.0.Introduction 2 3.0.Method 5 3.1.Participants 5 3.2.Materials 5 3.3.Procedure 6 3.4.Learning trials 6 3.5.Immediate test 7 3.6.Post test 7 4.0.Results 8 5.0.Discussion 10 6.0.Reference Lists 14 7.0.Appendices 17 Appendix B: Instruction to participants 19 1.0. Abstract Does the provision of reliable semantic information help second language learners acquire new terms or words? The two experiments conducted set to investigate whether adult second language learners of Chinese can pick the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. It has compared explicit and implicit teaching so as to ascertain understanding of meaning of semantic radicals. Working with non-Chinese participants, the experiment was to manipulate benefits of explicit and implicit instructions of the semantic information when learning new characters. Participants were arbitrarily assigned into two groups examining explicit and implicit effects. After the analysis of the tabulated results, it was realised that conclusively, implicit learners were responding positively either in regular or irregular conditions. 2.0. Introduction Functional roles of semantic radicals in Chinese characters has greatly benefitted from research around it. To begin with, DeKeyser (2008) argues that when foreign students learn complex Chinese grammar structures, they benefit more from being implicitly told grammatical rules compared to trying to infer a rule using explicit approach. Contrary to this finding, adult learners of a second language in most cases benefit more through explicit instruction compared to the implicit one (Ellis, 2005; Norris & Ortega, 2000). Some scholars argue that the rule of implicit and explicit may not apply in aspects of reading and language (Dunlap et al., 2011). In English for instance, there is high variable in its sound-spelling correspondence. In Spanish, gender markings of determiners as used in some instances may not always correspond or match the final vowel of the noun. Therefore comparing with the experiment conducted, some Chinese characters have unique and different pronunciations and meanings and that depends on the context of the sentence. When such exceptions or irregularities occur, it is difficult to assume that explicit instructions of rules will still benefit the learners. As noted by Johnson (2001), there are semantic radicals in many Chinese words or unique orthographic subcomponents that can provide information concerning the characters. To understand orthographic sub-components, Johnson explains that most of Chinese characters are compound therefore they can be decomposed radicals (orthographic sub-components). Research conducted earlier indicate that adult second language learners who attempted to pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters were unable to detect the presence of helpful cues in the orthographic forms and this was only possible if such relationship was approached implicitly (Janowsky, 2000). In a related case, a study was conducted to examine native Australian English speakers with no prior Chinese languages. The participants were given 26 Chinese character-meaning pair for a study. First group of 13 adult learners were earlier informed of functional role of semantic radicals in Chinese characters thus showed ability to remember more items on an immediate post-test compared to the other group who were not given any information prior to the experiment. The conclusion drawn was that the adult learners could easily pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of the Chinese characters presented using implicit approach (Taft and Chung, 1999). Contrary to the findings of the above experiment, native America English speakers learning Chinese as their second language were introduced to noun classifiers while receiving different kinds of explicit and implicit feedbacks (Thalmayer et al., 2011). Results indicated that these learners benefited most from having their attention focused on the relationship existing between form and meaning. Though this experiment has no direct relationship with functional role of semantic radicals in Chinese characters, it can be concluded that learning Chinese as the second language through implicit approach have benefits in vocabulary acquisition. In as much, it cannot be assumed that implicit approach can make adult second language learners of Chinese pick the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of its characters. To begin with, research on complex grammatical systems recognises that when adult learners are made to memorise characters (implicit approach of learning), participants grasp underlying grammatical structures better (Salter, 2005). However, these learners are not equipped with general rules of the grammatical systems. It is not clear, as per the already existing research whether implicit or explicit approach of teaching could be better for functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. On the one hand, there are benefits using explicit approach with focus on location of semantic components. On the other hand, there is a possibility that learners are likely to be overwhelmed or distracted by the all irregularities inherent in the process of learning. As Perfetti and Dunlap (2007) note, Chinese semantic cues are often not as reliable predictors as in other languages therefore it can be even confusing for adult learners to be introduced to Chinese language for the first time. Therefore it means teaching inconsistent form-meaning relationships may be challenging. The aim of this study is to determine whether explicit or implicit is the best approach for teaching adult second language learners of Chinese and whether they can pick the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. In the two experiments done, adult learners getting introduced to Chinese as second language studied various characters. In order to realise research topic, the research varied regular and irregular cues to character meaning provided and the effect of being taught implicitly and explicitly. The overall result indicates that learners working with characters under implicit approach performed better irrespective of whether it is regular or irregular. Though regular was more accurate statistically compared with irregular, explicit conditions did not give better results. 3.0. Method 3.1. Participants 78 students from a 2nd year undergraduate psychology course participated in the experiment as part of their course curriculum. Only the results from 30 participants, who completed all parts of the experiment, have had no previous experience of learning spoken or written Chinese, and did not experience language learning difficulties as a child, were included in the final analysis. Of the 30 participants included in the final analysis, 17 were female, and seven participants reported a language other than English as their first language (other first languages were Bulgarian, Greek, Russian, Farsi, Turkish and Spanish). Participants were randomly assigned to either the Explicit or Implicit instruction groups. There were 15 participants in each group. 3.2. Materials Learning materials consisted of two groups of Chinese characters: 15 were semantically regular, and 15 were semantically irregular. Both groups had three subsets of five characters with one of the following semantic radicals: the 禾 radical for grain (usually denoting characters with meanings related with grain production or farming), the 火 radical for fire (usually denoting characters with meanings related to fire or cooking), and the 口 radical for mouth (usually denoting character with meanings related to mouth actions such eating or talking). All characters had left-right structure, with the semantic radical always appearing on the left-hand side of the character. Visual complexity as measured by mean stroke count was matched between the two groups of characters. A full list of the learning materials is given in Appendix A. 3.3. Procedure Participants took part in the learning trials and the immediate test in a single session that took approximately 40 minutes. Their demographic details were also collected during this session. Participants were then tested in the post test exactly one week later. At the start of the experiment, participants were randomly assigned to either the implicit instruction group or the explicit instruction group. Prior to learning commencement, both groups were told that they are going to learn a list of 30 Chinese characters, together with their English translations. The explicit instruction group was further informed of the functional role of semantic radicals. They were also presented with each of the three semantic radicals they will encounter, and given information regarding the location and meaning of each of these semantic radicals. The instructions received by the two groups are given in Appendix B. 3.4. Learning trials The learning trials were presented on a computer either on campus or at home. Learning trials consisted of three blocks, each block containing all 30 semantically regular and semantically irregular characters presented in randomised order. Each trial began with a 1000ms fixation cross in the centre of the screen, which was immediately replaced with a Chinese character together with its English translation directly beneath it, which remained on the screen for 5000ms. The next trial began automatically when the previous trial ended. After the complete viewing of each block, participants took part in a quiz, which was aimed to consolidate previously learnt information. Results from the quizzes were not included in the analysis. Each quiz consisted of 10 randomly selected items from the list of 30 Chinese characters, so that at the end of the learning session, each of the items had been quizzed once. The quiz follows a similar format as the learning trials. Each trial begins with a 1000ms fixation cross, followed by a Chinese character without its English translation for 5000ms. The correct English translation then appeared on the screen for 3000ms. Participants were instructed to think of the English translation when they saw the Chinese character by itself, and give themselves a tick or a cross on a piece of paper when the correct English translation appeared. 3.5. Immediate test At the end of the learning trials and quizzes, the participants were presented with the immediate test. All 30 characters from the learning trials were presented in randomised order in an internet based survey, and they were instructed to write down the meaning of the characters in English. They were given 10 minutes to complete this task. Demographic data regarding the participants’ language background was collected at the end of the session. 3.6. Post test Exactly two weeks after the learning session, participants took part in the post test, which took approximately 10 minutes. The post test consisted of an internet survey with the same 30 Chinese characters from the learning trials. The items were presented in random order, along with a multiple choice of four possible English meanings. Participants were instructed to select the meaning they thought the character represented. 4.0. Results Overall, participants during immediate test scored a mean accuracy of 0.38 for regular and 0.36 for irregular with SD of 0.18 and 0.24 respectively for explicit groups. Implicit group had mean accuracy of 0.42 and 0.36 with SD of 0.29 and 0.26 respectively. This result shows marginally significant effect of reliability with students’ accuracy depending on semantic radicals that are related. Looking at the results on post test, learners had improved accuracy with characters with related semantic radicals (Explicit: M=0.58 and SD=0.18 for regular and M=0.48 and SD=0.19 for irregular) (Implicit M=0.71 and SD=0.23 for regular and M=0.56 and SD=0.20 for irregular). These results are different from those found during immediate test---indicating effects of training or exposure suggesting that learners tend to have higher accuracy on the post-test especially with characters learned in the implicit approach. It is worth noting that scores for related items were higher. Nevertheless, students showed improvements on these characters after immediate test that was done implicitly. This could be due to the fact that stimuli or the characters to be matched were not systematically organised (by reliability or radical) during the immediate test. This explains the reason why regular was more accurate and implicit better than explicit on both regular and irregular conditions (the graphs below illustrate the findings) Graph 1: Mean accuracy and standard deviation for immediate test Graph 2: Mean accuracy and standard deviation for post test 5.0. Discussion Does the use of implicit instruction effective when teaching the functional role of semantic radicals and the meaning of Chinese characters effective? The results of the experiments conducted show that implicit is better than explicit on both regular and irregular conditions and can help adult second language learners of Chinese pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. Interpreting the result further, the groups of students working with explicit approach did not show better learning process for Chinese characters with semantic radicals that are related to the meaning of the whole word. For instance, response for the semantic radical 禾 to mean grain or farm related was not well responded to with the group giving mean accuracy of 0.58 and 0.48 for regular and irregular respectively in post test. Looking at results for immediate test, participants were expected to infer English meaning for the Chinese characters they were given. If the response were semantically very similar to the original word then the test was scored as correct. Interpreting results for the immediate test, students under implicit approach performed relatively better under both regular and irregular conditions. As explained by Gurven et al. (2013), this is due to the fact that learners were able to transfer knowledge of semantic radical strategy as taught in the determination of the meaning of the new characters presented. This seemed to have been the trend even when the semantic radical was not a reliable predictor of the meaning of the character during the session. Comparing the means of immediate test and post test, the margin is narrow and the likely reason is that explicit approach of semantic radical must have interfered with short term retention during immediate test but after the two weeks, it helped with long-term retention. However, post and immediate test results indicated that learners were not adopting what can be termed as a “semantic radical strategy” in the determination of the meaning the characters presented. Earlier researches have shown that learners do not necessarily pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters (McAbee and Oswald, 2013; Taft and Chung, 1999). However, such conclusions lack the needed scrutiny. The point is, once the connection between the meaning and character is made implicit to the student(s), they can use such strategy for remembering the given characters or vocabulary and decode new words even if such words are not what are expected---even though doing this may lead to incorrect assumptions and guesses on new recently or new learned items. Paunonen and LeBel (2012) recognise that while implicit approach forms fundamental basis for picking up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese and Japanese characters, it should be noted that his approach was not inclusive because first, Paunonen and LeBel heavily relied on Japanese characters and secondly, instructors can illuminate connections existing between orthographic subcomponents and whole word meanings. Past researches have also mentioned that if there are phonological or semantic cues within a langauge’s orthographic forms, instructors can use this to teach students learn to read better in the new system of writing (Pittenger, 2005; McAbee and Oswald, 2013). This is not always the case because as the experiment could reveal, there are notable relationship or interaction between word frequency and semantic radicals. That is, learners were able to easily classify or give meanings to high frequency words compared with low frequency ones. The outcome of this research indicates that native speakers of alphabetic languages such as Korean or English cannot succeed with an attempt of applying the principle of alphabet in picking up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. Therefore these learners will have to apply new strategy of decoding so as to accommodate to new Chinese writing (Perfetti and Dunlap, 2007; Perfetti et al., 2007). Just like Perfetti and Dunlap mention, implicitly showing students the connection between Chinese characters and meaning can provide a new decoding strategy for the native speakers of alphabetic languages. Is implicit instruction of rules able to help students attain transfer of new Chinese characters? While this research tends to disagree, Hanley (2005) also supports the finding. Firstly, picking up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters involves extraction of patterns or rules and applying such to new exemplars. And as Hanley notes, implicit approach takes time and exposure to number of examples. This is not similar case with explicit approach where attention was drawn to patterns and rules; not just semantic radicals. Researches such as Norris and Ortega (2000) failed to recognize possible source of confusion. Norris and Ortega fail to note that Chinese semantic radicals greatly vary in terms of their validity, position and presence. That is why Hanley warns against just telling learners to look on the left-hand when dealing with a compound character as this is likely to cause more confusion that learning. This is why this research contends that though implicit approach gives better result than explicit on both regular and irregular conditions, explicitly taught learners also stand a chance of benefitting especially when dealing with connection between meanings of words and semantic subcomponents of words. The bottom line of this study shows that implicit approach is not enough when adult second language learners of Chinese attempt to pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. Putting this simply, semantic radicals of Chinese characters used are processing units of both its verb and noun. It is also necessary to note that Chinese semantic radicals are not “semantic and structural chunks” but what can be termed as “grammatical chunks”. This phenomenon is due to its structural characteristic of verbs and nouns. Therefore the discovery of meaning to Chinese grammatical meaning of semantic radicals will illuminate the teaching of Chinese language besides enriching the theories of Chinese characters and words. 6.0. Reference Lists DeKeyser, R. (2008). Implicit and Explicit Learning. In C. J. Doughty & M.H. Long (Eds). The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. pp. 313-348. Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Oxford, UK. http://w3.coh.arizona.edu/classes/ariew/slat596/DeKeyser.pdf Dunlap, S., Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., & Wu, S.-M. (2011). Learning vocabulary in Chinese as a foreign language: Effects of explicit instruction and semantic cue reliability. http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/DunlapLearningVocabulary.pdf Ellis, N. C. (2005). At the interface: Dynamic interactions of explicit and implicit language knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 305-352. doi: 10+10170S027226310505014X Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M., Kaplan, H., & Lero Vie, M. (2013). How universal is the Big Five? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among forager–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality And Social Psychology, 104(2), 354-370. doi:10.1037/a0030841 Hanley, J. R. (2005). Learning to read Chinese. In C. Hulme & M. Snowling (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp 272-289). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Janowsky, D. (2000). Over-representation of Myers Briggs type indicator introversion in social phobia patients. Depression & Anxiety (1091-4269), 11(3), 121-125.  Johnson, W. J. (2001). A Higher Order Analysis of the Factor Structure of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Measurement & Evaluation In Counseling & Development (American Counseling Association), 34(2), 96.  McAbee, S. T., & Oswald, F. L. (2013). The criterion-related validity of personality measures for predicting GPA: A meta-analytic validity competition. Psychological Assessment, 25(2), 532-544. doi:10.1037/a0031748 Norris, J., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning, 50, 417-528. Paunonen, S. V., & LeBel, E. P. (2012). Socially desirable responding and its elusive effects on the validity of personality assessments. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 103(1), 158-175. doi:10.1037/a0028165. Perfetti, C. A., & Dunlap, S. (2007). Learning to read: General principles and writing system variations. In K. Koda & A. Zehler (Eds.), Learning to read across languages. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bolger, D. J., & Tan, L. (2007). Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain’s reading network. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(2), 131-146. doi:10.1017/S1366728907002891. Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary comments regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice And Research, 57(3), 210-221. doi:10.1037/1065-9293.57.3.210. Salter, D. J. (2005). Two Approaches to Examining the Stability of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Scores. Measurement & Evaluation In Counseling & Development (American Counseling Association), 37(4), 208-219.  Taft, M., & Chung, K. (1999). Using radicals in teaching Chinese characters to second language learners. Psychologia, 42, 243-251. http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/mtaft/TaftANDChung1999.PDF Thalmayer, A., Saucier, G., & Eigenhuis, A. (2011). Comparative validity of Brief to Medium Length Big Five and Big Six Personality Questionnaires. Psychological Assessment, 23(4), 995-1009. doi:10.1037/a0024165 Tett, R. (2009). The use of personality test norms in work settings: Effects of sample size and relevance. Journal Of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 82(3), 639-659 7.0. Appendices Appendix A: Learning materials Semantically Regular Semantically Irregular Character Stroke Count Semantic Radical Meaning Character Stroke Count Semantic Radical Meaning 稻 15 禾 grain 稍 12 禾 bit 秧 10 禾 seedling 积 10 禾 increase 稼 15 禾 plant 称 10 禾 label 秆 8 禾 stalk 税 12 禾 tax 种 9 禾 grow 秘 10 禾 secret 灯 6 火 lamp 烂 9 火 rotten 炉 8 火 stove 烦 10 火 annoyed 灿 7 火 bright 炕 8 火 bed 炸 9 火 fry 炫 9 火 boast 烧 10 火 burn 炼 9 火 practice 唱 11 口 sing 叶 5 口 leaf 吃 6 口 eat 吓 6 口 scare 咬 9 口 bite 唯 11 口 only 呼 8 口 snore 咱 9 口 us 味 8 口 taste 哆 9 口 shiver Mean 9.27 9.27 Appendix B: Instruction to participants Explicit group In this experiment, you will learn a series of Chinese characters. The Chinese characters presented all have a component called the semantic radical, which usually (but not always) appears on the left-hand side of the character. All the characters presented today contain one of three semantic radicals. You will be able to learn the characters better if you know what each semantic radical means. The semantic radical 禾 means grain or farm related. E.g., 秔 means a type of rice. The semantic radical 火 means fire or heat related. E.g., 炍 means light. The semantic radical 口 means actions to do with the mouth. E.g., 叨 means to chatter. Each character and its translation will be displayed for 5 seconds. Please look at the characters carefully, and try to remember their meanings. There will be 3 blocks of presentations, followed by a final test. At the end of each block, you will be given a short quiz about some of the characters you just saw. These quizzes are practice for the final test. For each quiz item, please write down your answer on a sheet of paper as soon as you see the character. The correct answer will appear on the screen automatically. At the end of the presentation, please put away your answer sheet. Then, follow the link provided to complete the final test. When you are ready, click the mouse to start the experiment. Implicit group In this experiment, you see a a series of Chinese characters, along with their English translations. Your task is to learn as many of theses characters as you can. Each character and its translation will be displayed for 5 seconds. Please look at the characters carefully, and try to remember their meanings. There will be 3 blocks of presentations, followed by a final test. At the end of each block, you will be given a short quiz about some of the characters you just saw. The quizzes are practice for the final test. For each quiz item, please write down your answer on a sheet of paper as soon as you see the character. The correct answer will appear on the screen automatically. At the end of the presentation, please follow the link to complete the final test. When you are ready, click the mouse to start the experiment. Read More

Research conducted earlier indicate that adult second language learners who attempted to pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters were unable to detect the presence of helpful cues in the orthographic forms and this was only possible if such relationship was approached implicitly (Janowsky, 2000). In a related case, a study was conducted to examine native Australian English speakers with no prior Chinese languages. The participants were given 26 Chinese character-meaning pair for a study.

First group of 13 adult learners were earlier informed of functional role of semantic radicals in Chinese characters thus showed ability to remember more items on an immediate post-test compared to the other group who were not given any information prior to the experiment. The conclusion drawn was that the adult learners could easily pick up the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of the Chinese characters presented using implicit approach (Taft and Chung, 1999). Contrary to the findings of the above experiment, native America English speakers learning Chinese as their second language were introduced to noun classifiers while receiving different kinds of explicit and implicit feedbacks (Thalmayer et al., 2011). Results indicated that these learners benefited most from having their attention focused on the relationship existing between form and meaning.

Though this experiment has no direct relationship with functional role of semantic radicals in Chinese characters, it can be concluded that learning Chinese as the second language through implicit approach have benefits in vocabulary acquisition. In as much, it cannot be assumed that implicit approach can make adult second language learners of Chinese pick the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of its characters. To begin with, research on complex grammatical systems recognises that when adult learners are made to memorise characters (implicit approach of learning), participants grasp underlying grammatical structures better (Salter, 2005).

However, these learners are not equipped with general rules of the grammatical systems. It is not clear, as per the already existing research whether implicit or explicit approach of teaching could be better for functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters. On the one hand, there are benefits using explicit approach with focus on location of semantic components. On the other hand, there is a possibility that learners are likely to be overwhelmed or distracted by the all irregularities inherent in the process of learning.

As Perfetti and Dunlap (2007) note, Chinese semantic cues are often not as reliable predictors as in other languages therefore it can be even confusing for adult learners to be introduced to Chinese language for the first time. Therefore it means teaching inconsistent form-meaning relationships may be challenging. The aim of this study is to determine whether explicit or implicit is the best approach for teaching adult second language learners of Chinese and whether they can pick the functional role of semantic radicals while learning the meaning of Chinese characters.

In the two experiments done, adult learners getting introduced to Chinese as second language studied various characters. In order to realise research topic, the research varied regular and irregular cues to character meaning provided and the effect of being taught implicitly and explicitly. The overall result indicates that learners working with characters under implicit approach performed better irrespective of whether it is regular or irregular. Though regular was more accurate statistically compared with irregular, explicit conditions did not give better results. 3.0. Method 3.1.

Participants 78 students from a 2nd year undergraduate psychology course participated in the experiment as part of their course curriculum. Only the results from 30 participants, who completed all parts of the experiment, have had no previous experience of learning spoken or written Chinese, and did not experience language learning difficulties as a child, were included in the final analysis.

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