Embedded Files
Some (Not So) Radical Thoughts on Literacy
An understanding of radicals is paramount to understanding how to read and write in Chinese. Here we take a deep dive into why this matters for early acquisition.
What are Radicals?
If you are new to Chinese, you have likely not heard about radicals (aside from people who put pineapple on pizza...yuck). A radical in Chinese is something entirely different. To put it simply, radicals are the building blocks of Chinese characters. It may help to decompose a radical to show you how this works.
女
釹籹奶姆妞她好
Below we have the character for "rice." Chinese characters like these are called phono-semantic compounds (形聲字), which contain a sound component and a meaning component. We can deconstruct these two pieces, the radicals, into two parts, shown below.
飯
↓
食+反
The blue part here is 食, which usually indicates a character has something to do with food or eating. The purple part is the part which gives the character it's sound, 反, which sounds like "fan". Therefore, the word for rice, 飯, gets it's meaning from a component related to food, and it's sound from a component related to the sound "fan." For a more visual example with the radical 手, check out the video below, which shows how semantic radicals (the meaning part of the character) are used in many characters.
Source: Dinara Min School.
Radicals and Orthographic Awareness
It may come as little surprise that the ability to recognize these radicals helps people read in Chinese. This has been consistently shown in the research. One meta-analytic study, which gathered the data of more than 10,000 participants across over 70 samples, concluded across the board that those who could decompose radicals had a moderately associated gain in reading ability. Put another way, Chinese readers generally had an easier time reading if they were able to understand radicals.
Orthographic awareness is the formal name for this ability, sometimes also called radical awareness. But why has it become so important in Chinese? Consider for a second the following word in English:
cat
This word is composed of three graphs, in this case letters, to form a word. The letters here are very simple. The "c" is composed of one stroke, whereas the "a" and "t" are composed of two strokes, altogether making this three-graph word 5 strokes in total. Now compare that with another word in Chinese with three graphs, this time characters instead of letters:
繁體字
Despite being the same number of graphs, the level of visual information here has increased dramatically. Here, 繁 is composed of 17 strokes, 體 is composed of 22 strokes, and 字 is composed of 6 strokes. Altogether, this makes a whopping 45 strokes for one word. This is a lot for early readers to process. Instead, we can break these pieces of information into more bite-sized pieces that are easier to digest. Let's observe the second character here, 體, which has a typical phono-semantic construction and is made up of 22 strokes. If we now divide it up accordingly radical-by-radical:
體
↓
骨+豊
We now have two radicals, 骨, which has 9 strokes, and 豊, which is made up of 13 strokes. The level of information required to interpret each piece has now effectively been halved. This can dramatically decrease the amount of information necessary for processing a character, particularly when someone has problems immediately recognizing it. We also now know that 骨, which means bone or something related to the body, gives this character some related meaning, as 體 means "body." We also understand it's sound, as 豊 sounds like "li" and this character similarly sounds like "ti." Given that Chinese is such a visually demanding language which requires integrating visual skills in often complex ways, it seems likely that this ability would produce positive effects for native speakers of Chinese.
Chinese as a Second Language: Similar or Different?
If orthographic awareness has a positive association with reading for native speakers of Chinese, would this be effective for non-natives speakers? The answer seems to be yes. Another meta-analysis, which incorporated effects across a smaller batch of ten studies across more than 1,000 subjects, showed that the effect of orthographic awareness on reading was very similar. Though this meta-analysis showed effects across cross-sectional data (one time point of data collection), this effect has also been demonstrated in longitudinal data. What this means is that early awareness of radicals predicts later reading development, which gives stronger evidence that it's effects are directly attributable to reading success. Additionally, it appears that this skill may be important for both reading and writing.
However, this relationship may not be as simple as orthographic awareness = reading ability. For example, one study showed that both orthographic/radical awareness and single-character reading were predictive of compound character reading. However, after controlling for this single-character reading ability, the ability to read simple characters had a greater influence on compound character reading. This means that learning single character forms may be first important for building a base of "core radicals", thereafter characters in general become better predictors of reading success. This makes sense given that many radicals are also self-contained characters.
Source: Wong, 2017.
Additionally, orthographic awareness has both direct and indirect effects on writing. In another analysis on CSL learners, orthographic awareness seemed to be associated with direct positive gains in reading and writing. However, these gains in writing were partially moderated by the relationship between orthographic awareness and reading. In other words, the relationship between orthographic awareness and writing depends to a degree on the association between orthographic awareness and reading, not just orthographic awareness alone.
Source: Wong & Zhou, 2021
Can Orthographic Awareness Training Help?
Some parents and educators may be curious as to how they can foster this skill. If orthographic awareness has a positive influence on reading and writing, surely it would be useful to learn how to train this ability. Thankfully, some intervention studies have shown that CSL children can benefit from intervention which targets orthographic awareness. For example, one study showed that after a three week online learning course, CSL students improved in both their phonetic and semantic radical skills.
Source: Chen et al., 2013.
The grouping of characters during learning may also affect how radicals and characters are acquired. In another interesting study, participants were either taught characters without groupings or with groupings, as well as taught with either pinyin similarities or semantic similarities of the characters. Results showed that all groups had higher accuracy rates during reading, but the participants who learned radicals that were grouped by meaning had the highest gains.
Source: Xu et al., 2014.
So where can one turn to learn more about radicals if they are starting to learn Chinese? A number of subscription services offer lessons on learning radicals, of which I really enjoyed the content from Yoyo Chinese. However, those are likely expensive and not accessible for everyone. While there are not a lot of free resources for learning all of the Chinese radicals you would need to know, there are plenty of videos on YouTube where you can learn some of the core radicals necessary for learning Chinese. Thereafter, much can likely be learned through exposure to new simple characters, whose radicals can be looked up in free programs like Pleco. As an example, below I supply a video fo some basic radicals, whereafter one can look up more after learning them.
Source: Mandarin Point.
References
Chen, H.-C., Hsu, C.-C., Chang, L.-Y., Lin, Y.-C., Chang, K.-E., & Sung, Y.-T. (2013). Using a radical-derived character e-learning platform to increase learner knowledge of Chinese characters. Language Learning and Technology, 17(1), 89–106.
Chen, X., & Zhao, J. (2022). Reading-related skills associated with acquisition of Chinese as a second/foreign language: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13(783964). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.783964
Dong, Y., Peng, S.-N., Sun, Y.-K., Wu, S. X.-Y., & Wang, W.-S. (2020). Reading comprehension and metalinguistic knowledge in Chinese readers: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(3037). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03037
McBride, C. A. (2016). Is Chinese special? Four aspects of Chinese literacy acquisition that might distinguish learning Chinese from learning alphabetic orthographies. Educational Psychology Review, 28, 523–549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9318-2
Wong, Y. K. (2017). The role of radical awareness in Chinese-as-a-second-language learners’ Chinese character reading development. Language Awareness, 26(3), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2017.1400039
Wong, Y. K. (2020). The relationship between orthographic awareness and Chinese reading in Hong Kong’s young CSL learners. ECNU Review of Education, 3(4), 678–693. https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120930485
Wong, Y. K., & Zhou, Y. (2021). Effects of metalinguistic awareness on Chinese as a second language spelling through the mediation of reading and copying. Reading and Writing, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10167-0
Xu, Y., Chang, L.-Y., & Perfetti, C. A. (2014). The effect of radical-based grouping in character learning in Chinese as a foreign language. The Modern Language Journal, 98(3), 773–793. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12122.x
Zhou, Y., McBride-Chang, C., & Wong, N. (2014). What is the role of visual skills in learning to read? Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00776
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse