Children read or “decode” English words in ways that are distinct from those used to break down Chinese characters. Although some children might be able to decode either English or Chinese words, such skills do not carry over to the other language. Instead, different decoding strategies have to be learned and retained in order to gain understanding in that particular language. Hence, it is common for children to be better in one language compared to another.  

 

Figure 1. Example of English decoding using letter-sound correspondences 

Research has shown that three of the most common strategies used by children to remember and decode Chinese characters emphasised visual processing instead of oral processing (Pine et al., 2003). Furthermore, younger children, below the age of 9, have a higher tendency to separate Chinese characters into its smaller and more basic components. 

 

Figure 2. Levels of Chinese word complexity; Word, Character, Radical 

Reading in Chinese involves both single-character reading and multi-character word reading. In general, most Chinese words are compound words, comprising two or more characters (Wang & McBride, 2016). For instance, in Figure 2, the word 冰水 (ice water) consists of two characters–冰 (ice) and 水 (water). Additionally, more than 80% of currently used Chinese characters are compound characters which have two radicals indicating the pronunciation and meaning respectively (Kang & Li, 1993). For example, the character “冰” (ice) comprises two parts–the phonetic component 水 (water) and the semantic component 冫(cold). The phonetic component is pronounced shuǐ, signifying the sound of the character while the semantic component represents the meaning of the character, which is “ice”. It is important for children to understand how the positions and functions of different components vary in Chinese words. (Li et al., 2012; Tong et al., 2009) It has also been found that children begin to be aware of how Chinese words are written from the age of six (Anderson et al., 2013).  

Thus, it is important for parents to encourage their children to read aloud in Chinese. Additionally, it may be helpful for parents to cultivate a habit of paying attention to the different components of Chinese characters when reading in Chinese with their children to aid learning of new words in the future. 

 

References: 

Anderson, R. C., Ku, Y. M., Li, W., Chen, X., Wu, X., & Shu, H. (2013). Learning to see the patterns in Chinese characters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(1), 41-56. 

Li, Y., & Kang, J. (1993). Information analysis of usage of characters in modern Chinese. Shanghai: Shanghai Education Publisher, 84-98. 

Li, T., McBride-Chang, C., Wong, A., & Shu, H. (2012). Longitudinal predictors of spelling and reading comprehension in Chinese as an L1 and English as an L2 in Hong Kong Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 286. 

Limetree Literacy. (2022). Letter Sound Association.https://limetree-literacy-education.teachable.com/courses/397574/lectures/4399504 

Pine, N., Ping’an, H., & Ren Song, H. (2003). Decoding strategies used by Chinese primary school children. Journal of Literacy Research, 35(2), 777-812. 

Tong, X., McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., & Wong, A. M. (2009). Morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and spelling errors: Keys to understanding early Chinese literacy acquisition. Scientific Studies of Reading, 13(5), 426-452. 

Wang, Y., & McBride, C. (2016). Character reading and word reading in Chinese: Unique correlates for Chinese kindergarteners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(2), 371-386. 

 

Drafted by: Kah Xuan

Edited by: Phoebe, Michelle

Reviewed by: Marilyn