Abstract
To date, the utility of Pinyin in teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) is still under debate. This study sought to enhance the understanding of Pinyin's role in CFL self-teaching by investigating the association of Pinyin spelling with word meaning inference among non-alphabetic L1 CFL learners. Fifty-four Japanese-speaking university first-year CFL learners completed one test consisting of five paper-and-pencil tasks, including Pinyin spelling, phonetic radical knowledge, semantic radical knowledge, single-character word meaning inferencing, and contextualized multi-character word meaning inferencing. Correlation and regression analyses yielded three major findings: (1) Pinyin spelling was significantly related to single-character word meaning inferencing, over and above phonetic and semantic radical knowledge. (2) Semantic radical knowledge was directly related to contextualized multi-character word inferencing. (3) Pinyin spelling was indirectly related to contextualized multi-character word inferencing via single-character word meaning inferencing. The results suggested that Pinyin spelling does matter in CFL self-teaching, even for non-alphabetic CFL learners.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 39-70 |
Journal | 華語文教學研究 |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 3 Apr 2024 |
Keywords
- Chinese
- foreign language
- Pinyin spelling
- self-teaching
- word meaning inferencing