Augmented Reality (AR) technology, as one of the emerging innovative technologies, is proven to have the potential to facilitate second language acquisition in terms of contextualized visualization and learning interactivity. Nevertheless, no empirical research has been conducted on the use of an AR-assisted approach to help adult Chinese language…

Several previous studies showed that prime-target pairs with orthographical overlap but no semantic or morphological relationship (e.g., freeze-free) produced a masked priming effect in second language (L2) speakers but not in first language (L1) speakers. The present study further explored this intriguing L1-L2 difference by comparing English…

The ability to decode new words of varying degrees of orthographic-phonological mapping is an important word recognition skill across languages. Chinese characters represent three types of phonetic regularity: regular, semi-regular, and irregular depending on the degree of reliability of the pronunciation information provided by the phonetic…

Children learning Chinese must cope with an opaque orthography lacking transparent relations between oral pronunciations and written characters: a challenge heightened for L2 learners. Use of digital Pinyin input may facilitate connections between oral and written language by allowing learners to access vocabulary they cannot yet write. We…

The effects of transcription skills, comprising both spelling and handwriting fluency, on sentence writing among young Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners were evaluated and compared to those of reading and oral language using a one-year longitudinal study design. Various writing models postulated that transcription skills are essential in…

When reading Chinese, skilled native readers regularly gain a preview benefit (PB) when the parafoveal word is orthographically or semantically related to the target word. Evidence shows that non-native, beginning Chinese readers can obtain an orthographic PB during Chinese reading, which indicates the parafoveal processing of low-level visual…

Morphological knowledge is known to be positively associated with reading ability. However, whether morphological knowledge affects children's learning of new orthographic representations is less clear. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate morphological effects on orthographic learning in English, and whether this effect, if any, is different…

Background: We used two principles of implicit learning, variability and complexity, to train mental orthographic representations in refugee English learners to improve spelling. Methods: Twenty-eight refugees enrolled in a 10-week English class were trained on classroom words using stimuli designed to encourage implicit learning. We contrasted…

There is evidence that orthographic knowledge can influence on-line spoken-word recognition. Interestingly, when graphic and phonetic codes are not congruent due to the application of phonological alternation processes, people report hearing sounds that are matched to graphic (underlying), not phonetic codes (Hallé et al. in J Mem Lang 43:618-639,…

This study investigated the oral reading strategy use of 51 first-grade readers in a Chinese Dual-Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programme. It attempted to answer the following research questions: (1) What reading strategies do first-grade Mandarin Chinese DLBE learners employ to decode Chinese text during oral reading? (2) Do the first-grade…

The isolated elements and variability effects of cognitive load theory were used to alter the element interactivity of Chinese characters when instructing novice learners (72 overseas students at a Chinese university) in writing characters using worked examples-practice procedures. A group of characters with more than eight strokes was…

Many people who learn Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) have encountered challenges when it comes to character writing. This was a follow-up study of our quantitative study in 2019 that showed that mobile app was a significantly more effective method than pen-and-paper method to learn Chinese character writing. Thirty beginning CFL learners…

This study examined how a dialogic reading (DR) program with a component of multisensory learning (MS) of Chinese characters improved early Chinese reading and writing skills in L2 Chinese-speaking kindergarteners in Hong Kong. The DR + MS program was compared to the same DR program but focusing on morphological awareness (MA) training. A total of…

To relieve young children of a burden and to encourage informal literacy practices such as shared book reading, the Chinese Ministry of Education implemented an early education policy that forbids the teaching of formal literacy (e.g., Chinese character recognition and Pinyin) as well as more ambitious literacy teaching practices (e.g., Teaching…

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phoneme-sized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word…