汉字结构特点和出现次数在儿童字形学习中的作用

Orthographic Learning in Chinese Children: Effects of Character Type and Exposure

以41名二年级儿童为研究对象,采用"自我教学"(self-teaching)研究范式(Share,1999),通过操纵汉字类型、出现次数和测试时间,考察儿童的字形学习效果。结果发现,儿童在故事朗读中的字形学习受汉字结构和部件熟悉性的影响,表现为独体字有稳定的再认优势,熟悉部件能促进合体字短期的再认和回忆,这对今后的理论研究和教学实践都具有一定启示意义。

To date, no research that explores the orthographic learning of Chinese from the ＂self-teaching＂ view has been reported. Chinese research suggests that both the character type and the component familiarity affect the orthographic learning of Chinese children. The present study is to test the ＂self-teaching hypothesis＂ （Share, 1995） on Chinese children and extend this hypothesis by taking into consideration character type and component familiarity. The current study adopts the classical ＂self-teaching＂ paradigm （Share, 1999）. In the orthographic learning phase, 41 average Chinese second graders are asked to read aloud 12 self-compiled stories, each containing 1 embedded pseudocharacter as target character. All of the characters and pseudocharacters in stories have Hanyu pinyin labeled as pronunciation clues to help children read the stories correctly. While reading the stories, children are not given any feedback as to their pronunciation of the target characters, nor are they provided with the pronunciation. Three factors are manipulated to investigate their effects on orthographic learning, including the character type, the exposure time and the post-test intervals. There are 12 pseudocharacters in total, which can be divided into 3 types： （a） 4 simple pseudocharacters, reformed from simple characters and selected from the first grade Chinese language textbooks, and each of which is an integral whole that contains no component or subcomponent; （b） 4 familiar compound pseudocharacters, each consisting of 2 familiar components appearing in legitimate positions; （c） 4 semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters, each consisting of 1 familiar component and 1 unfamiliar component, both appearing in legitimate positions. The familiar components are selected from textbooks of the first and second grades, and the unfamiliar components are from textbooks of the third to sixth grades. There are 2 exposure time conditions： 3 times and 6 times. Two simple pseudocharacters, 2 familiar compound pseudocharacters, and 2 semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters appear 3 times in the stories, while the rest of pseudocharacters appear 6 times. During the orthographic test phase, the orthographic choice task and the writing task are tested to measure children＇s recognition and recall performance of the 12 pseudocharacters, respectively. These 2 tasks are both firstly administered immediately after the orthographic learning phase （Time 1） and again 3 days later （Time 2）. All testing is conducted one on one in a quiet area of the children＇s school over two sessions. Results revealed that Chinese children also demonstrated ＂self-teaching＂ from reading aloud stories when target characters were exposed 3 times and maintain part of the learning effect for 3 days like Hebrew children （Share, 1999） and English （Nation et al., 2007） children. Compared with familiar compound, pseudocharacters and semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters, simple pseudocharacters could be recognized the most accurately at Time 1 and Time 2 （ps〈.05）. However, this result is not the case for the writing task. The performance of familiar compound pseudocharacters was better than that of semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters on the orthographic choice task （p〈.001） and the writing （p〈.05） task at Time 1, nevertheless, we found no significant difference between scores of familiar compound pseudocharacters and semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters at Time 2. The scores of semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters were the lowest across two post-test points. These results suggested that simple pseudoeharacters had recognition advantage that could maintain for 3 days during the orthographic learning process. By contrast, familiar compound pseudocharacters had recall advantage only on the day that children read aloud the stories. Additionally, it was hard for children to learn compound pseudocharacters containing unfamiliar components through ＂self-teaching＂. This study confirms our hypothesis that Chinese children can have ＂self-teaching＂, and both the character type and the component familiarity play a key role on this orthographic learning process, which has important suggestions for further theoretical research and literacy teaching.