Using a Radical-derived Character E-learning Platform to Increase Learner Knowledge of Chinese Characters

Hsueh-Chih Chen, National Taiwan Normal University Chih-Chun Hsu, National Defense University Li-Yun Chang, University of Pittsburgh Yu-Chi Lin, National Taiwan Normal University Kuo-En Chang, National Taiwan Normal University Yao-Ting Sung, National Taiwan Normal University The present study is aimed at investigating the effect of a radical-derived Chinese character teaching strategy on enhancing Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners’ Chinese orthographic awareness. An e-learning teaching platform, based on statistical data from the Chinese Orthography Database Explorer (Chen, Chang, Chou, Sung, & Chang, 2011), was established and used as an auxiliary teaching tool. A nonequivalent pretestposttest quasi-experiment was conducted, with 129 Chinese-American CFL learners as participants (69 people in the experimental group and 60 people in the comparison group), to examine the effectiveness of the e-learning platform. After a three-week course— involving instruction on Chinese orthographic knowledge and at least seven phonetic/semantic radicals and their derivative characters per week—the experimental group performed significantly better than the comparison group on a phonetic radical awareness test, a semantic radical awareness test, as well as an orthography knowledge test.