A Study On The Relationship Between The Development Of Orthography Consciousness And Chinese Character Reading Competence Of Intermediate Level International Chinese Learners

In recent years of the study on teaching Chinese as a Second Language at home,most scholars mainly explore the formation and development of Chinese orthographic consciousness among international students,or conduct a comparison of Chinese orthographic consciousness among international students from different mother tongue backgrounds or with different teaching modes.But few scholars have examined the relationship between the development of orthography consciousness and Chinese character reading competence.Against this background,the paper adopts an experimental approach combined with data analysis and an interview,with intermediate level African students from China University of Petroleum(Beijing)as the research object to explore how orthography consciousness affects Chinese character reading competence.The experiment will be guided by the theory of four factors(orthography consciousness,visual search ability,phonetic awareness,rapid naming)proposed by Mei-Ling Hao who believes that these four factors affect language learners’ Chinese character reading competence.In the experiment,a midterm test and a final test will be given to examine the relationship between four factors and Chinese character reading competence of the subjects.The tests are conducted in four stages.First,it uses true-or-false character decision to examine the development of the orthography consciousness.Secondly,the participants are required to quickly locate the corresponding target graph to test the visual search ability.Then,the participants’ phonological awareness is assessed by visual vowel judgment.Finally,rapid naming,which will take twice,requires participants to quickly and accurately read out each number,with the seconds averaged.The Chinese character reading competence test takes the average score of the two tests(Chinese character reading accuracy test and Chinese character reading fluency test).SPSS is used to analyze the scores of the subjects.Pearson correlation analysis is used to determine whether there is a significant correlation between the four factors and Chinese character reading competence.Multiple linear regression analysis is used to explore the contribution rate of the four factors to Chinese character reading competence.A comparative analysis of the relevant data between the middle and end of the semester is conducted to explore the development of Chinese orthographic consciousness and Chinese character reading competence of intermediate level international students,and to investigate how the development of Chinese orthographic consciousness affects the development of Chinese character reading competence.At last,through the analysis of the results of the interview,relevant suggestions and specific teaching design are provided for teachers to cultivate the orthographic consciousness of international students.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows.First,the participants have made progress in both consciousness of Chinese character orthography and Chinese character reading competence.Second,the orthography consciousness in the middle and end of the semester is significantly related to Chinese character reading competence,but the intensity of the correlation witnesses a decline.Third,the influence of the participants’ development of Chinese character orthography consciousness on the development of Chinese character reading competence also declines.Finally,an analysis of the interview reveals that the students who have been taught the position of Chinese characters at the beginning of their Chinese study perform better than those who fail to learn it.For intermediate level African students,their recognition of left and right structure characters is weaker than that of up and down structure characters.Based on the analysis of the interview results,this paper puts forward suggestions for teaching,and further provides a concrete and feasible teaching design.Teachers can cultivate international students’ orthographic consciousness of Chinese characters by splitting parts,clarifying the structure of parts,and determining the position of parts,so as to help them learn and memorize the sound,meaning and structure of Chinese characters.