Phonological Strategies in Writing Chinese Ideographs by L2 Learners: A Preliminary Study

Chinese characters are traditionally regarded as ideographic, thus potential benefits underlying the phonological encoding of each character have been neglected. This paper attempts to examine what phonological behaviors second language learners of Chinese (CSL) consciously use when they face difficulties of writing Chinese ideographs (CW). Preliminary results of a questionnaire about learning strategies of CW indicate that: (i) CSL learners rely heavily on Hanyu Pinyin strategies throughout the whole learning progress of CW, and (ii) the homophony effect of Chinese characters has a less important role in CW but would become increasingly important as learners’ Chinese proficiency levels rise.

Keywords

phonological strategies writing Chinese ideographs CSL learners

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Jun 2019; Issue No. 5; p.29 - 43

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

English

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)