The Impact Of Stroke Order Learning On Chinese Character Recognition And Writing By Second Language Learners Of Chines

With the improvement of China’s international status,the number of people learning Chinese is increasing.As an important medium for the transmission and promotion of Chinese culture,Chinese plays a critical role in “the Belt and Road” and in building a community with a shared future for mankind.In fact,however,learners widely find Chinese difficult to learn.Many researchers agree that the main reason why Chinese is so difficult to master is because Chinese characters are difficult to acquire.Some scholars proposed that stroke order can help learners to acquire Chinese characters.But there are also studies suggested that stroke order does not affect the recognition and writing of characters,and that learning stroke order will increase the burden of learners.As can be seen,there is still no consensus among researchers on whether to teach stroke order.This study used a computer-assisted stroke order learning system,investigated the effectiveness of stroke-order learning in promoting the ability of Chinese as a second language(CSL)learners to recognize and write Chinese characters with different complexity.This study employed a 3(stroke-order learning condition: correct stroke-order,random stroke-order,non-stroke-order)×2(stroke-number: less strokes,more strokes)×2(test time: immediately after learning,one week after learning)within-subject design involving a total of 43 participants.We compared the performance of CSL learners in recognizing and writing Chinese characters of different stroke numbers among three stroke-order learning conditions,and further investigated the memory retention one week after learning.The results of the recognition tests showed that the correct stroke-order condition led to shorter reaction time and higher accuracy in the orthographic discrimination task and the form-semantic matching task compared to random stroke-order and non-stroke-order conditions;and learning correct stroke orders elicited a larger facilitative effect on the orthographic processing of more-stroke characters than less-stroke characters.Furthermore,the results of the delayed test revealed that Chinese characters learned in the correct stroke-order condition produced superior orthography,meaning and sound recalls than in the other two learning conditions.The results of the writing task also showed that the correct stroke-order learning condition led to higher accuracy of handwriting than random stroke-order and non-stroke-order learning conditions.The results of this study suggest that learning correct stroke order facilitates CSL learners to form and consolidate more precise orthographic representations,to develop long-term memory for orthographic-semantic links,and to write Chinese characters more accurately.Based on the results of the empirical study,we propose that the stroke-order instruction should be emphasized and enhanced.