The role of pinyin proficiency in the acquisition of L2 vocabulary among English-speaking secondary...

The role of pinyin proficiency in the acquisition of L2 vocabulary among

English-speaking secondary school learners of Chinese

Andy Castro

[email protected]

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of

Master of Arts in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

at the University of Sheffield

Declaration:

All research for this project was carried out in accordance with the Research Ethics Policy of

the University of Sheffield. The project was ethically approved via the School of East Asian

Studies’ Ethics Review Procedure.

Date: 4 August 2014

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition

ii

Abstract

Mandarin Chinese is written using characters whose appearance does not bear a direct

relationship to their pronunciation. Teachers and learners of Chinese therefore use a

Romanisation system, pinyin, for representing the sound of each character. Dual Coding

Theory (DCT; Paivio, 1991) and Ehri’s (1992) theory of word learning indicate that

knowledge of a word’s orthographic representation in a shallow-depth orthography such as

pinyin should reinforce the phonological form of that word in the learner’s memory. On the

other hand, pedagogists are divided concerning whether extensive use of pinyin helps or

hinders learners’ ability to recall meanings of vocabulary presented only in Chinese

characters (Xing, 2009; Packard, 1990).

This dissertation presents the results of a cross-sectional study examining the

relationship between proficiency in pinyin and the ability to recall meanings of vocabulary

items presented aurally on one hand, and in characters on the other. 71 students learning

Chinese at an independent school in England were tested on their vocabulary recall

knowledge and their accuracy in pinyin transcription. They were also asked about the

strategies they use for learning vocabulary and their attitudes towards pinyin.

The results showed that there was a significant, medium correlation between pinyin

proficiency and recall of vocabulary encountered aurally. This result is consistent with DCT

and Ehri’s (1992) theory of word learning. However, there was no correlation between pinyin

proficiency and character recognition. Thus a higher ability in pinyin appears to neither help

nor hinder the acquisition of the orthographic form of new vocabulary in L2 Chinese.


iii

Acknowledgements

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the teachers and the students who took part in this study.

Without their enthusiastic participation, it would not have been possible. I would also like to

thank my supervisor, Dr. Lily Chen, who encouraged me and provided invaluable feedback

throughout the course of my research. Finally I am very grateful to my wife, Catherine

Ching-yee, and my two boys, who magnificently failed to cause too many disruptions to my

work.


iv

Contents

Abstract iii

Acknowledgements iv

List of Tables viii

List of Figures ix

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Literature Review 3

1 Introduction 3

2 Memory and vocabulary knowledge 3

2.1 Memory 3

2.2 Vocabulary knowledge 4

3 Second language vocabulary acquisition 6

4 L2 Chinese and vocabulary acquisition 8

4.1 Pinyin and L2 Chinese acquisition 9

4.2 Pinyin and L1 Chinese reading 11

4.3 L2 Chinese vocabulary learning strategies 11

5 Research gap and focus of the current study 12

Chapter 3: Methodology 13

1 Research objectives 13

1.1 Hypotheses 13

1.2 Research questions 14

2 Background to study 15

3 Participants 17

4 Materials 17

4.1 Vocabulary tests 17

4.2 Pinyin proficiency tests 20

4.3 Questionnaires 21

5 Procedure 21

6 Scoring 22


v

Chapter 4: Results 23

1 Introduction 23

2 Overview 23

2.1 Class characteristics 23

2.2 Teacher characteristics 24

3 Student memorisation strategies and attitudes towards pinyin 24

3.1 Memorisation strategies 24

3.2 Attitudes towards pinyin 25

4 Vocabulary recall tests 27

4.1 Test validity 27

4.2 Vocabulary test results (Tasks 1-3) 28

5 Pinyin ability tests 32

5.1 Test validity 32

5.2 Measured pinyin ability (Task 5) 33

5.3 Self-reported pinyin ability 34

6 Correlations 34

6.1 Pinyin ability and VDS correlations 34

6.2 Pinyin ability, VDS and OPRI correlations by year group 36

6.3 Individual test item correlations 36

Chapter 5: Discussion 38

1 Introduction 38

2 Evidence for learners’ reliance on pinyin 38

2.1 Self-reported vocabulary memorisation techniques 38

2.2 Self-reported attitudes towards pinyin 39

2.3 Recall of vocabulary presented in pinyin 39

2.4 Measured pinyin ability 40

3 Relationships between pinyin and recall of aural form 40

3.1 Evidence from pinyin ability and recall performance 40

3.2 Evidence from teaching approaches and recall performance 41

4 Relationships between pinyin and recall of orthographic form 42


vi

Chapter 6: Conclusions 43

1 Summary of research findings 43

2 Pedagogical implications 43

3 Limitations of study and ideas for future research 44

References 45

Appendix A: Vocabulary recall test items 50

Appendix B: Pinyin proficiency test items 52

Appendix C: Student Response Sheet 53

Appendix D: Teacher Questionnaire 57


vii

List of Tables

Table 1 Aspects of pinyin introduced in Jin Bu 1 16

Table 2 Key aspects of pinyin not taught in Jin Bu 1 or 2 16

Table 3 Vocabulary already taught to Year 8 and 9 students at the point of testing 18

Table 4 Vocabulary recall Depth of knowledge Scale (VDS) used in this study 19

Table 5 Vocabulary tested for each class 19

Table 6 Principles for selecting target items 20

Table 7 General overview of classes under study 23

Table 8 Overview of teachers and teaching strategies 24

Table 9 Overall mean recall and VDS scores by modality 29

Table 10 Atypical vocabulary items showing higher recall for visual form 32

Table 11 Mean number of characters in Task 4 whose pronunciations were recalled 32

Table 12 Correlations between vocabulary recall measures and pinyin accuracy 35

Table 13 Year 8 correlations (N=37) 36

Table 14 Year 9 correlations (N=31) 36


viii

List of Figures

Figure 1 The DCT view of human memory and cognition 4

Figure 2 The word-association model 6

Figure 3 The concept-mediation model 6

Figure 4 Example of a semantic-phonetic Chinese character 8

Figure 5 Typical presentation of new vocabulary in Jin Bu 15

Figure 6 Self-reported use of pinyin-related vocabulary learning strategies, by class 25

Figure 7 Self-reported use of other vocabulary learning strategies, by class 25

Figure 8 Self-reported attitudes towards pinyin for learning to read and write Chinese 26

Figure 9 Self-reported attitudes towards pinyin for learning to listen to and speak Chinese 26

Figure 10 Comparison of results for the six vocabulary sets tested 28

Figure 11 Mean recall by year group 29

Figure 12 Mean VDS by year group 29

Figure 13 Mean recall scores by class 30

Figure 14 Mean VDS scores by class 31

Figure 15 Measured pinyin accuracy by class, similar ability classes juxtaposed 34

Figure 16 Scatter plot showing association between pinyin ability and aural VDS 35

Figure 17 Scatter plot of mean VDS for the 42 test items in aural and pinyin modalities 37

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 1: Introduction

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

In recent years, the UK government has been promoting the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in

mainstream secondary schools across the UK (Paton, 2014). Success in learning a foreign

language has been shown to depend to a large extent upon successful vocabulary acquisition

(Nation, 2001; Pang, 2008). However, few studies have been conducted on the effectiveness

of various forms of learning and instruction for native English-speaking learners of Chinese

when trying to acquire vocabulary.

Second language vocabulary acquisition is more complex in Chinese than in other

languages, for two main reasons. Firstly, Chinese contains many sounds that do not exist in

English and are unfamiliar to native English speakers (Li and Kang, 1993). Secondly, the

Chinese writing system is largely logographic, consisting of thousands of characters that give

little indication of their pronunciation (DeFrancis, 1989). For this reason, many Chinese

textbooks additionally make use of pinyin (Everson, 2011). Pinyin is a writing system that

enables the sounds of Mandarin to be recorded using English letters (Li and Kang, 1993).

Practice regarding the use of pinyin in the Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL)

classroom is mixed. Some pedagogists suggest that pinyin need not be taught systematically

and that the teacher should draw attention to pinyin forms as little as possible (Xing, 2006).

Others propose that pinyin should be taught before teaching characters and that pinyin is

crucial for helping learners acquire new phonological forms (Packard, 1990). Both views are

supported by various theories of cognition and language acquisition (see Chapter 2), but

neither has much backing from empirical research.

A limited amount of research has already been conducted into the effects of using

pinyin for learning Chinese vocabulary (Chung, 2008). In this study, therefore, I focus on

examining the relationship between students’ proficiency in pinyin and their retention of

phonological and orthographic forms of L2 vocabulary. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that

an accurate grasp of pinyin results in enhanced recognition and recall of vocabulary

encountered aurally. I also test the assumption upon which this hypothesis rests – that

students rely on pinyin when memorising aural forms of new vocabulary. Finally, I examine

whether there is any relationship between pinyin proficiency and recall of vocabulary written

in Chinese characters.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300224943_Culture_in_Teaching_and_Learning_Chinese_as_a_Foreign_Language?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264451870_Effects_of_Time_Lag_in_the_Introduction_of_Characters_into_the_Chinese_Language_Curriculum?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255594200_Research_on_good_and_poor_reader_characteristics_Implications_for_L2_reading_research_in_China?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248498157_What_effect_do_mixed_sensory_mode_instructional_formats_have_on_both_novice_and_experienced_learners_of_Chinese_characters?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37721699_Visible_Speech_The_Diverse_Oneness_of_Writing_Systems?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 1: Introduction

2

The participants in this study are students at an independent secondary school in the

south of England. I address the research questions by testing the students on their knowledge

of Chinese vocabulary presented in characters and aurally, and by testing their ability to

transcribe pinyin accurately. I also administer questionnaires to find out about students’ and

teachers’ attitudes towards pinyin in relation to learning and teaching vocabulary.

My results show that, firstly, most participants make extensive use of pinyin when

learning new vocabulary, regardless of teaching methodology. Secondly, there is a

significant, medium correlation between pinyin ability and knowledge of vocabulary

encountered aurally. This does not necessarily indicate a cause-effect relationship and could

be due to the positive effects of second language phonological awareness on both skills.

Finally, there is no significant correlation between pinyin ability and written vocabulary

(character) knowledge, suggesting that knowledge of pinyin has neither positive nor negative

effects for acquiring the orthographic forms of new vocabulary.

The dissertation is organised as follows. Chapter 2 establishes a theoretical framework

and reviews past studies relating to the mental lexicon, L2 vocabulary acquisition, and

Chinese vocabulary learning. Chapter 3 describes the methodology I used to collect the data.

Chapter 4 summarises the results that relate specifically to my research questions. Discussion

of the results in relation to the theoretical framework is given in Chapter 5. Conclusions,

including limitations of the study and ideas for further research, are presented in Chapter 6.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 2: Literature Review

3

Chapter 2

Literature Review

1 Introduction

In this chapter I first summarize some basic theories pertaining to human cognition and

vocabulary knowledge (Section 2). I then outline the main theories relating specifically to L2

vocabulary acquisition (Section 3). Next, I describe the central issues peculiar to Chinese L2

vocabulary acquisition and summarise recent significant findings in this area (Section 4).

Finally, I identify the research gap which I hope to address in this study (Section 5).

2 Memory and vocabulary knowledge

2.1 Memory

Vocabulary learning is primarily concerned with human memory. There are many

theories of memory (Anderson, 2000), but I adopt Paivio’s (1991) Dual Coding Theory

(DCT) as one particularly helpful for providing a framework for this study. DCT holds that

there are two primary forms (or “codes”) of representation in the human mind: verbal and

nonverbal (Sadoski and Paivio, 2001, 45ff.). Each of these two forms could be encoded in

three main modalities (or “modes”): visual, auditory or haptic. Units of verbal representation

are known as “logogens” and could consist of letters (visual), phonemes (auditory), words

(visual or auditory) or word sequences (visual or auditory). Units of nonverbal representation

are known as “imagens” and could consist of images, sounds, or even impressions of taste,

smell, touch or emotions. Logogens are encoded sequentially whereas imagens are encoded

synchronically or spatially (Sadoski & Paivio, 2001, 51-57). Verbal and nonverbal processing

can either occur independently or interdependently. Activation of a logogen in the verbal

system could activate other logogens via associative links, and/or imagens in the nonverbal

system via referential links. The whole system is represented in Figure 1.


4

Figure 1 The DCT view of human memory and cognition (reproduced from Sadoski &

Paivio, 2001, 53)

Aspects of DCT particularly relevant to Chinese L2 vocabulary acquisition include:

1) auditory and visual logogens are represented separately, not as parts of a single code

(Sadoski & Paivio, 2001, 120) – thus, the sound of a Chinese word, its pinyin

representation and its written form in Chinese characters are all encoded as separate

units (see Section 4 for an explanation of the Chinese writing systems);

2) the existence of both verbal and nonverbal codes which correspond to the same event

or object “can have additive effects on recall” (Paivio, 1991, 259).

According to Anderson (2000, 211), studies indicate that information is encoded in

the memory in the same modality as that in which it is received; i.e. visual images are

encoded visually and, therefore, spatially, and verbal input (speech or written text) is encoded

verbally and, therefore, linearly.

2.2 Vocabulary knowledge

2.2.1 Vocabulary knowledge in general

At its most basic level, knowledge of a word could be described as “remembering the

pronunciation of words and their meanings” (Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008, 175). If the language

learner is also learning to read and write, one might add to this knowledge of the orthographic

form (Nation, 2001, 36).

Logogens Imagens A

ssosia

tive stru

cutre

Ass

osi

ati

ve

stru

cutr

e

Referential

Connections

Verbal System Nonverbal System


5

However, many authors point out that vocabulary knowledge is far more complex

than knowledge of form and meaning. Grabe (2009, 267) proposes nine aspects of word

knowledge: orthography, morphology, parts of speech, pronunciation, meanings,

collocations, meaning associations, specific uses, register. Even within each of these, there

could be multiple layers of knowledge.

2.2.2 The mental lexicon

For the purposes of this study I stick with the basic notion that vocabulary knowledge

involves knowledge of form and meaning. Specifically, I define “L2 Chinese vocabulary

acquisition” as involving acquisition of the phonological form, the orthographic form in

Chinese characters (see Section 4), and the meaning. This fits in neatly with Perfetti’s Lexical

Constituency Model (LCM; Perfetti, Liu and Tan, 2005), which posits three constituents in

the mental lexicon: 1) orthographic; 2) phonological; and 3) semantic. A key aspect of LCM

is that the phonological form is merely one constituent in the mental lexicon, and that the

orthographic form can link directly to the meaning without invoking an intermediary

phonological form (Perfetti et al., 2005, 87). This contrasts with the commonly-held

assumption that the written form’s sole function is to lead the reader to the phonological form

(Rosenthal and Ehri, 2008, 176). For example, Gathercole and Baddeley’s (1993) model of

visual word recognition assumes that the written word is converted into an “articulatory

form” before the meaning is accessed (Gathercole and Baddeley, 1993, 180). However,

studies such as Spinks et al.’s (2000) indicate that, in Chinese at least, a direct pathway from

orthographic form to meaning (skipping phonological form) can be utilised (Spinks, Liu,

Perfetti and Tan, 2000, B9).

If the Chinese L2 learner also utilises pinyin in vocabulary acquisition, it is unclear

under the LCM where the pinyin form would be stored in the mental lexicon, there being only

one “slot” for the orthographic form which is already filled by the Chinese characters. Under

DCT, however, one may hypothesise that the pinyin form exists as a separate logogen in

verbal memory, linked to the phonological form and, perhaps less strongly, to the written

form in characters.


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2.2.3 L2 vocabulary knowledge and the L1-L2 mental lexicon interface

The theories discussed thus far all concern the L1 mental lexicon. Addition of an L2

obviously complicates the situation. Potter et al. (1984) proposed two hypotheses concerning

L2 storage and access: 1) the word-association model; and 2) the concept-mediation model.

These are illustrated in Figures 2 and 3. The word-association model proposes that the

meaning of an L2 word is accessed indirectly via an equivalent word in the L1. On the other

hand, the concept-mediation model proposes that equivalent words in both L1 and L2 are

linked directly to the same semantic entry, and that translation from L1 to L2 takes place via

common underlying semantic entries.

lexical layer

conceptual layer

Potter et al.’s study of Chinese-English and English-French bilinguals indicated that

both groups employed a concept-mediation system, and that L2 words were not accessed via

L1 words. However, de Groot (2002, 39) cites two other studies (Chen and Leung, 1989 and

Kroll and Curley, 1988) that give results consistent with the word-association model for

beginner L2 learners. Together, the evidence suggests that beginner L2 learners tend to use a

word-association route (Figure 2) for retrieval of the meaning of L2 words, but that this is

replaced by a concept-mediation mechanism (Figure 3) as L2 proficiency increases.

3 Second language vocabulary acquisition

L2 vocabulary acquisition has been the subject of much study and debate, although usually in

the context of Indo-European languages, all of which have phonological orthographies

(Channell, 1988; Nation, 2001). Vocabulary acquisition can be divided into intentional (or

explicit) vocabulary acquisition, in which words are explicitly taught and consciously learnt

L1 L2 L1 L2

Figure 2 The word-association model

(reproduced from De Groot, 2002, 37)

Figure 3 The concept-mediation

model (De Groot, 2002, 37)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232571397_Patterns_of_Lexical_Processing_in_a_Nonnative_Language?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239063036_Lexical_memory_in_novice_bilinguals_The_role_of_concepts_in_retrieving_second_language_words?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==



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or memorised, and incidental (or implicit) acquisition, in which words are acquired

subconsciously through repeated accidental exposure during L2 input (van Zeeland and

Schmitt, 2013). Some neurolinguistic studies of aphasic bilinguals suggest that explicit and

implicit memory systems are actually stored in separate brain structures (Fabbro, 2002). In

this study I focus solely on explicit acquisition.

Of particular relevance to this study is Ehri’s (1992) theory of word learning.

Although it was originally developed in the context of L1 vocabulary acquisition, it can also

be applied to L2 acquisition. Ehri (1992, 114-5) suggests that viewing the target word’s

written form helps to strengthen the phonological form in the learner’s memory. This

assumes that the written form is represented using a phonologically-based orthography with

clear grapheme-sound correspondences, which is not the case for Chinese (see Section 4

below for more explanation).

In a recent study, Rosenthal and Ehri (2008) compared English primary school

students’ retention of new L1 vocabulary. They found that learning and recall of the

pronunciation of new words was significantly enhanced when the students were exposed to

the written form of the words instead of just hearing and repeating them. They suggest that:

If readers also view the word’s written form, connections are activated between

graphemes in the spelling and phonemes in the pronunciation. These connections

bond the spelling to its pronunciation, and the word’s orthographic identity is

added to its representation in memory. Because pronunciations of words are

fleeting, graphemes in spellings serve to clarify phonemic constituents in memory.

(Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008, 186)

In some ways, this theory is supported by Perfetti’s Lexical Quality Hypothesis

(Perfetti and Hart, 2002), which proposes that the more one knows about words, the higher

one’s reading ability will be. For languages which employ phonological orthographies (unlike

Chinese), reading proficiency, and presumably written vocabulary recall, will be enhanced if

the learner encounters both the auditory form and the orthographic form of words, since these

two aspects of word knowledge will reinforce each other. In the light of this, it is unsurprising

that Schmitt’s (1997, 214) mnemonic L2 vocabulary learning strategy involving mental

representations of a word’s phonological form through visualisation of the orthographic form,

is deemed to be highly effective in vocabulary acquisition. For Chinese, it is possible that

Ehri’s theory of word learning may apply if the learner utilises a phonological orthography,

such as pinyin, during word learning (see Section 4 below) in addition to Chinese characters.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286433386_The_lexical_quality_hypothesis?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==


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语

讠吾

[y214]

[u35]

semantic phonetic

‘spoken language’

‘speech’

Also of relevance to L2 vocabulary acquisition is van Merriënboer and Sweller’s

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) (Sweller, van Merriënboer and Paas, 1998; van Merriënboer

and Sweller, 2005). CLT assumes a limited working memory that stores seven elements (or

thereabouts) but operates on a smaller number of elements (two to four). This limited

working memory only applies to new information gained from the senses. It does not apply to

information retrieved from long-term memory (van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005, 148). In

the context of Chinese L2 vocabulary acquisition, CLT implies that if learners are

simultaneously presented with new vocabulary items in multiple modalities, e.g. spoken

form, characters, pinyin and meaning, this may be too much information for the learner to

process effectively in working memory, leading to a breakdown in learning.

4 L2 Chinese and vocabulary acquisition

Relatively few studies have been done on the effectiveness of various methods of learning

and instruction for native English-speaking learners of Chinese when trying to acquire

vocabulary. One of the challenges peculiar to learning Chinese is the fact that it is written

using Chinese characters, a partially logographic orthography. According to Li and Kang

(1993), 80% of 7,000 frequently used characters comprise a semantic and a phonetic element,

as illustrated in Figure 4. In most cases, as in Figure 4, the phonetic element provides only a

very rough guide to the pronunciation of the character. According to Perfetti et al. (2005, 45),

the phonetic component reliably predicts the pronunciation for only around 38% of such

characters.

Figure 4 Example of a semantic-phonetic Chinese character

This indicates that Chinese characters in and of themselves do not contain enough

information for L2 learners to know how to pronounce words. Nevertheless, Chinese

character pronunciation

(IPA) meaning


9

characters are the orthographic forms that all learners must acquire, since almost all textual

communication in Chinese is carried out through the medium of characters.

Because of the non-phonetic nature of Chinese characters, schoolchildren in mainland

China are first taught pinyin exclusively for eight weeks (Chen and Yuen, 1991; Yin et al.,

2011) to assist them in their early reading. Pinyin is a Latin-based phonological writing

system that is almost completely regular in its sound-grapheme representations (Huang and

Liao, 2002). It is used in many Chinese textbooks for Chinese L2 learners since it provides a

convenient guide to pronunciation (Everson, 2011, 262). DeFrancis (1989, 268) puts pinyin

on a par with Finnish and Japanese kana as being one of the simplest and most regular

alphabetic orthographies in the world.

Despite its regularity, pinyin can be misleading for native English speakers because

some letters in pinyin do not represent the same sounds in Chinese as they do in English.

Moreover, some of these sounds, including the four lexical tones (indicated by diacritics), do

not exist in the English language. For example, c- is pronounced [tsʰ] rather than [k] or [s] as

in English, and q- is pronounced [tɕʰ] rather than [kʰw].

4.1 Pinyin and L2 Chinese acquisition

There are very few studies that have looked specifically at the role of pinyin in

Chinese L2 vocabulary acquisition. Most relevant to the present research, Chung (2008)

conducted a study to test the effects of simultaneous Chinese character and pinyin

presentations on L2 Chinese learners’ vocabulary acquisition, in the context of CLT. The

participants in his study were Year 7 (around 12 years old) students in their first year of

Chinese learning at two high schools in Australia. Participants were divided into two groups

and set the task of learning 20 new vocabulary items presented in Chinese characters. During

learning, one group was given pronunciations in pinyin and English meanings written down.

The other group were given pronunciations and meanings aurally through headphones. The

former group performed significantly better on recall of target vocabulary pronunciations.

The latter group performed significantly better on recall of target vocabulary meanings.

Chung hypothesised that the pinyin form “activates both the visual and the auditory channels

in working memory and engages processing of information in both of them” (Chung, 2008,

102), resulting in reinforced memory of the phonological form. In a second experiment

conducted on more advanced L2 Chinese learners in Year 9, Chung (2008, 104) found that

recall and retention of both meanings and pronunciation of new vocabulary was significantly

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239788061_The_role_of_tone_awareness_and_pinyin_knowledge_in_Chinese_reading?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254110433_Effects_of_Pinyin_and_Script_Type_on_Verbal_Processing_Comparisons_of_China_Taiwan_and_Hong_Kong_Experience?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==



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better among the students who had only heard the pronunciation and had not seen the pinyin.

Chung attributed this to reduced cognitive load in the character-aural presentation format

versus the character-pinyin format. Overall, the use of pinyin seemed to enhance the

acquisition of phonological forms among novice learners but to hinder it among more

proficient learners.

Chung’s findings should be treated with caution because the same set of participants

were used for both studies. Therefore the results of the second study could have been affected

by familiarity with the test format. Also, Chung did not test the effectiveness of presenting

new vocabulary items with pronunciations given both aurally and in pinyin. If Ehri’s (1992)

theory of word learning is correct, it is the combined format that would have produced the

best results, since the pinyin form would serve to reinforce the aural form.

Everson’s (1998) study of first-year university students’ L2 Chinese word

identification and reading aloud abilities found that over 90% of words that were identified

correctly were also pronounced correctly and vice versa, irrespective of how many items the

participants successfully recalled. Thus, for these beginner learners of Chinese, there was a

strong relationship between recalling a word’s meaning and recalling its pronunciation. On

this basis, Everson (1998, 200) suggested that the meanings of Chinese characters are only

accessed via their pronunciations for beginner L2 Chinese learners. This conclusion seems

unwarranted, however, because the same results could also suggest that meanings and

pronunciations are activated simultaneously.

Hu (2010, 106) points out that Everson’s implication of a direct link between

character pronunciation and vocabulary recall assumes that vocabulary items are encoded in

the brain in characters, whereas a study by McGinnis (1999) suggests that beginner Chinese

learners primarily encode vocabulary items in pinyin. Based on DCT, I would argue that

vocabulary items are likely to be encoded sequentially because they constitute logogens in

the verbal system. They are therefore probably arranged according to pronunciation or the

pinyin representation rather than any order inherent in visually rich Chinese characters.

Finally, Packard (1990) found that university students who spent the first three weeks

of their course exclusively focusing on Chinese pronunciation taught using pinyin performed

no worse in any aspect of Chinese (including reading and writing characters) at the end of

their first year than students who started learning characters from day one. Additionally, the

former group of students exhibited significantly better sound discrimination skills and had

gained greater L2 fluency than their peers by the end of the year (Packard, 1990, 174).

Packard’s study supports the notion that a greater front-end focus on pinyin and the Chinese

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sound system helps L2 learners to acquire important phonological skills necessary for

increased oral and aural proficiency.

4.2 Pinyin and L1 Chinese reading

In addition to these L2 studies, several studies have examined the role of pinyin

among Chinese children learning to read their L1. Initial learning of pinyin has been shown to

help young Chinese learners develop phonological awareness skills (Simner, Hung and

Shillcock, 2011; Dai and Lu, 1985; Wang, Perfetti and Liu, 2005). With respect to the role of

phonological awareness in L1 reading, studies show mixed results. Several studies indicate

that phonological awareness is not related to L1 Chinese reading proficiency (Huang and

Hanley, 1995; Tan et al., 2005; Zhou et al., 2012). However, Lin et al.’s (2010) longitudinal

study of Chinese L1 kindergartners in Beijing indicated that pinyin ability (in itself a measure

of phonological awareness) was a strong predictor of Chinese word reading. Yin et al. (2011)

showed that tone awareness was significantly correlated with L1 reading ability among

mainland Chinese school children, although general pinyin proficiency was not. Finally,

lending more support to the “access of meaning via pronunciation” theory of L2 vocabulary

recall (see 2.2.2), He, Wang and Anderson (2005) found that reading proficiency among

primary school students in Beijing was strongly related to their ability to pronounce

characters.

4.3 L2 Chinese vocabulary learning strategies

A few studies have investigated the strategies adopted by L2 learners for memorising

Chinese characters. Jiang and Cohen (2012, 17) cite two studies (Yin, 2003 and Ma, 2007)

showing that pinyin is often used by beginning Chinese learners to assist in memorising

Chinese characters. Shen’s (2005) study of first year university learners of Chinese identified

30 commonly used strategies for remembering Chinese characters, only one of which

involved the use of pinyin (associating the tone of the characters with pinyin). All of these

studies focussed on strategies for memorising characters rather than general strategies for

vocabulary learning. Finally, Hu (2010) analysed the self-reported challenges of learning L2

Chinese among UK university students. Many students identified vocabulary recall as a


12

particular difficulty, which Hu hypothesizes “may not only involve retrieving meaning of

vocabulary items but also their silent pronunciation” (Hu, 2010, 106).

5 Research gap and focus of the current study

As these studies show, there are still many issues to be resolved with respect to the teaching

and learning of L2 Chinese vocabulary. Crucially, regarding the use of pinyin in Chinese

pedagogy, there appear to be two competing views. One view is that pinyin need not be

directly taught prior to character teaching and that the teacher should draw attention to pinyin

forms as little as possible (Xing, 2006). The opposing view, adopted by some universities in

the West as well as some Chinese textbooks (Everson, 2011), is that pinyin should be

explicitly taught before teaching characters, and that pinyin plays an important role in

acquiring the phonological form of Chinese vocabulary. I can find no empirical studies

looking at the prevalence or observed effects of these two diametrically opposed views. For

this study, therefore, I focus on the issue of the use of pinyin when learning vocabulary.


Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 3: Methodology

13

Chapter 3

Methodology

1 Research objectives

The overarching research objective that I hope to address in this study is: Does the use of

pinyin assist in the successful acquisition of the phonological and/or written forms of Chinese

vocabulary among secondary school learners of L2 Chinese? In particular, I focus on the

intentional learning of phonological and written forms, because students at secondary school

level have generally not reached the minimum overall proficiency required for learning new

vocabulary items incidentally from connected speech or written discourse (see Laufer, 1997).

In this context, a complete answer to the main research objective requires addressing

the following subsidiary questions:

a) If students are presented with the pinyin forms of new vocabulary in addition to

their phonological and orthographic forms upon first encounter, and/or frequently

refer to pinyin forms during revision, is vocabulary retention enhanced?

b) Does a higher overall proficiency in pinyin result in better retention of the

phonological and orthographic forms of new vocabulary?

Question a) could only be empirically tested by means of a longitudinal study under

highly controlled conditions. For example, new vocabulary could be taught to a control

group, for which the use of pinyin is prohibited, and an experimental group, for which regular

pinyin use is clearly prescribed and managed. Students’ retention rates of orthographic and

phonological forms could then be tested at regular intervals. Unfortunately, such a study was

not feasible due to limitations in time and resources. Furthermore, Question a) has already

been addressed to some extent by Chung’s (2008) study. However, no study has specifically

examined the relationship between pinyin proficiency and vocabulary learning and recall, so

Question b) is the focus of this study.

1.1 Hypotheses

According to DCT (Paivio, 1991) and Ehri’s (1992) theory of word learning, the

presence in the mental lexicon of an orthographic form in a shallow phonological script such


14

as pinyin should strengthen the auditory encoding of the phonological form. Thus, if the

student repeatedly refers to both the pinyin form and the auditory form of a new word during

learning, recall of the meaning when the word is encountered aurally should be enhanced.

My key hypothesis is that recall will only be enhanced if the student has a good grasp

of pinyin. If their pinyin skills are accurate, the pinyin form will reinforce the auditory form in

their minds. If their pinyin skills are poor, the pinyin form will link to an incorrect auditory

form, resulting in poorer recognition and recall of L2 vocabulary when encountered aurally.

My hypothesis rests on the key assumption that the students often refer to pinyin when

memorising the phonological forms of new vocabulary.

In terms of recalling the meaning of vocabulary encountered in Chinese characters,

the influence of pinyin skills remains an open question. One hypothesis is that higher pinyin

proficiency could strengthen associative links between phonological forms and meaning,

simultaneously weakening the associative links between characters and meaning in the L2

mental lexicon under the LCM (as implied by Xing, 2006, 94). Given that some studies have

shown a relationship between pinyin ability and reading proficiency among native speakers of

Chinese (Lin et al., 2010; Yin et al., 2011), an alternative hypothesis is that higher pinyin

proficiency is linked in some way to enhanced recall of words presented in characters among

Chinese L2 learners (perhaps because meaning is accessed via the phonological form, see

Gathercole and Baddeley, 1993).

1.2 Research questions

To test these hypotheses and the key underlying assumption that students regularly

refer to pinyin when memorising vocabulary, the following questions need to be addressed:

1. What are students’ rates of recall of orthographic and phonological forms of learnt

vocabulary?

2. What level of pinyin proficiency have these same students achieved?

3. How much do these same students refer to the pinyin form when learning new

vocabulary?

Since beginner-intermediate secondary school students have only learnt a limited set

of vocabulary, it is possible to test levels of recall in a cross-sectional study. Pinyin

proficiency can also be tested. The results can be correlated to see whether a better grasp of

pinyin may lead to enhanced retention of orthographic or phonological forms. Of course, such



15

a correlation would not necessarily imply a cause-effect relationship. However, a lack of

correlation between the relevant indicators could challenge any one of the hypotheses.

2 Background to the study

The participants in this study were pupils at an independent secondary school in the south of

England. The school was chosen because Mandarin is a mandatory subject for all students at

Key Stage 3 (Years 7 to 9, ages 11-13). From Years 7 to 9, all students have three classes of

Mandarin per week, each of which lasts for either 35 or 45 minutes. The students are not

provided with any front-end lessons devoted to learning Chinese pronunciation or pinyin

before characters are introduced.

The textbooks used for the course are Jin Bu 1 and 2 (Carruthers, 2010a and 2010b).

Each book is divided into five chapters according to topic (e.g. “Family and home”,

“Hobbies” etc.), and each chapter is divided into around five units. The books introduce

characters from the very beginning and pinyin is treated in a cursory manner. New

vocabulary is presented in characters with the pinyin written alongside in much smaller script,

presumably in an attempt to encourage the learner to focus on the characters. Examples are

given in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Typical presentation of new vocabulary in Jin Bu (adapted from Carruthers, 2010a,

38)

Once a new word has been introduced, the pinyin form for that word only appears one

more time, in the summary of key language provided at the end of each chapter. All texts and

exercises are given in characters only. Little explanation of pinyin is given in the textbooks.

There are nine short explanatory notes in Jin Bu 1, and no notes at all in Jin Bu 2. Aspects of

pinyin that are explicitly taught in Jin Bu 1 are listed in Table 1. Key differences between

pinyin spelling/pronunciation and English spelling/pronunciation that are not mentioned in

either textbook are listed in Table 2.

看电视 kàn diàn shì to watch TV

看电视 kàn diàn shì


16

Table 1 Aspects of pinyin introduced in Jin Bu 1

Chapter Unit Aspect of pinyin taught

1 2 Tones and tone marks

1 3 General introduction

3 2 x- onset (pronounced [ɕ])

3 3 -ong rime (pronounced [oŋ])

3 4 qi (pronounced [tɕʰi])

4 1 -e rime (as monophthong pronounced [ɤ], in

diphthongs pronounced [ɛ])

4 3 -u rime* (pronounced [u])

5 3 zhi and zhu (pronounced [tʂʅ] and [tʂu] respectively

5 4 c- onset (pronounced [tsʰ]) *Only the [u] pronunciation is taught for -u. There is no mention of the alternative pronunciation [y]

in words such as youju ‘post office’.

Table 2 Key aspects of pinyin not taught in Jin Bu 1 or 2

Pinyin Standard Mandarin

pronunciation (IPA)

Standard British English

pronunciation (IPA)

zh-, ch-, sh- [tʂ], [tʂʰ], [ʂ] n/a, [tʃʰ], [ʃ] j-, q-, x- [tɕ], [tɕʰ], [ɕ] [tʃ], [kʰw], [kʰs] / [z]

r- [ʐ] [ɹ] -i / z_, c_, s_ [ɿ] [i] / [ai] -i / ch_, sh_, r_ [ʅ] [i] / [ai] -o [ɔ] [əʊ]

-ü [y] n/a

-u / y_, j_, q_, x_ [y] [ʉ]

-un [ʊn] [ɐn]

-ui [wɛi] n/a (looks like [wi]) -iu [jɔu] n/a (looks like [yʉ])

-ian, yan [jɛn] [iən] / [yæn]

Generally, the school takes a similar approach to the Jin Bu textbooks with regard to

teaching pinyin. Interviews with teachers indicated that although they do show pinyin to the

students when introducing new vocabulary items, they encourage students not to rely on


17

pinyin and almost never ask them to read pinyin out loud or to write pinyin. They teach very

little pinyin beyond what is explicitly taught in the Jin Bu textbooks.

3 Participants

All students in Years 8 and 9 participated in the study, in total constituting four classes of

around 20 students each. Participation was entirely voluntary and all participants read a brief

description of the research and its aims before giving their consent to taking part.

4 Materials

Various tests were designed to measure vocabulary knowledge and pinyin ability in order to

answer Research Questions 1 and 2. I also designed a short individual questionnaire to test

the underlying assumption that beginning learners tend to rely on pinyin, as well as to garner

information specifically relevant to Research Question 3.

4.1 Vocabulary tests

4.1.1 Test format

For the recall tests, I decided to test receptive rather than productive vocabulary

knowledge. Receptive (or “passive”) vocabulary knowledge consists of being able to

recognise and understand L2 words while reading or listening, whereas productive

knowledge involves the ability to use vocabulary while speaking or writing (Schmitt, 2000;

Pavičić Takač, 2008). Reasons for testing receptive knowledge included:

1) Studies have shown that receptive vocabulary in L2 is larger than productive

vocabulary (Melka, 1997, 84). I wanted the students to show as much of their

knowledge as possible in order to address Research Question 1 with more confidence.

2) Testing productive vocabulary knowledge would have restricted the number of items

that I could test because students only learn to write a subset of all the vocabulary

taught (see Table 3).

3) At least one study has indicated that out of four possible vocabulary test conditions

(active/passive recognition and active/passive recall), passive recall showed the

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greatest differentiation in test results and also correlated most highly with class grade

(Laufer and Goldstein, 2004).

Table 3 Vocabulary already taught to Year 8 and 9 students at the point of testing

I decided to test passive recall of vocabulary presented in three formats: 1)

orthographic form (characters) (Task 1); 2) phonological form (spoken) (Task 2); and 3)

pinyin form (Task 3). Testing recall of words given in pinyin would provide another indicator

of the students’ familiarity with pinyin forms.

There are many ways of testing vocabulary recall. Experts on language testing

generally advocate testing vocabulary in context through the L2, for example presenting

target items in sentences or longer discourse and then posing multiple choice questions

(Brown and Abeywickrama, 2010). For this study I decided to present target vocabulary in

isolation and ask the participants to provide simple L1 (English) translations, for several

reasons. Firstly, context sentences would be hard to construct due to the limited amount of

vocabulary available. Secondly, several studies suggest that beginning L2 learners associate

new vocabulary primarily with L1 entries in their mental lexicon, irrespective of how the

vocabulary is initially taught (Jiang, 2000; de Groot, 2002). Thirdly, students were familiar

with vocabulary tests in which words were tested in isolation. Finally, testing L2 vocabulary

in isolation ensured that I was testing vocabulary knowledge only and nothing else such as

reading comprehension (Read, 2000, 95).

In order to gain more insight into vocabulary knowledge than could be obtained by

simply asking for an English translation, I used a Vocabulary recall Depth of knowledge

Scale (henceforth, VDS) adapted from Paribakht and Mari’s (1997, 180) “Vocabulary

Knowledge Scale (VKS)”. For each target item, participants were required to indicate their

knowledge of the word on a scale of 1 to 4, as shown in Table 4. If participants thought they

knew what the word meant, they were also asked to provide a translation. Read (2000, 135)

cites several studies that use the VKS, concluding that the “VKS has ... proved to be a

workable measure and seems to be sensitive to increases in vocabulary knowledge that result

from reading activities.”

Year 8 Year 9

Studied up until Jin Bu 2,

Chapter 2

Jin Bu 2,

Chapter 4

Total number of words taught 260 382

Number of words for which students have learnt to write all

characters in the word (% total number of words taught) 148 (56.9%) 209 (54.7%)

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Table 4 Vocabulary recall Depth of knowledge Scale (VDS) used in this study

Category Description Score assigned

1 I definitely know what this word means 3 if correct translation provided, 1 if not

2 I think I know what this word means 2 if correct translation provided, 1 if not

3 This word is familiar but I can’t

remember what it means 1

4 I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing

this word before 0

4.1.2 Test design

In total I tested 21 target vocabulary items on each class of participants. For Year 8

students, this represented 8.1% of all words learnt so far, and for Year 9 students it

represented 5.5%. I was unable to test more due to time limitations.

In order to maximise comparability between the results for the three modalities being

tested, I adopted a Latin square design (Box, Hunter and Hunter, 1978). Each class of

participants was divided into three groups of equal size and the 21 target items were divided

into three sets, each set containing seven words. The sets were rotated between the groups by

modality, as shown in Table 5.

Table 5 Vocabulary tested for each class

Participants

Modality

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3

Orthographic (characters) Set A Set B Set C

Phonological (spoken) Set B Set C Set A

Pinyin Set C Set A Set B

4.1.3 Choice of target items for testing

Because Year 8 and Year 9 students were at different stages in their Mandarin

learning, I chose different sets of target vocabulary for each year group, following the

principles given in Table 6, both to ensure some level of consistency and to maximise

differentiation of results.


20

Table 6 Principles for selecting target items

Principle Reason

Include only double-character, up to Jin Bu 2,

Chapter 2 for Year 8 students and Jin Bu 2, Chapter 4

for Year 9 students.

Chinese has a large number of single-character

homophones, making single-character words

extremely difficult to recognise out of context

(McBride-Chang et al., 2003, 744).

Exclude words for which both characters occurred

three or more times in vocabulary learnt so far.

Words are too familiar. I wanted to maximise

differentiation of results in order to test for

meaningful correlations.

Exclude words consisting of reduplicated characters

(e.g. 爸爸 ‘father’, 太太 ‘wife’).

Such words are very distinctive and easy to

remember.

Exclude words from Jin Bu 1 Chapter 1 (e.g. 老师

‘teacher’, 早上 ‘morning’).

Such words are too common.

Exclude common conversational expressions (e.g. 谢

谢 ‘thank you’, 请问 ‘excuse me’) Such words are too common.

Exclude verb-noun combinations (e.g. 回家 ‘go back

home’, 上网 ‘go on the internet’) Too much variation in potential L2 translations.

I chose the words for each set according to a strict set of criteria designed to ensure

that each set contained words of roughly equal difficulty. Since I had no way of knowing how

frequently the students encountered each vocabulary item in their lessons or during revision, I

graded the difficulty of vocabulary items based upon how often each character within each

target word occurred amongst other vocabulary encountered, and upon written knowledge of

the characters in each word. The details of my criteria, along with the vocabulary items

chosen for testing, are given in Appendix A.

4.2 Pinyin proficiency tests

Pinyin proficiency can be tested in several ways. For example:

1) students write in pinyin the pronunciations of words spoken in Mandarin (used by

Condrell, 2012, in his commercially produced pinyin test);

2) students read unfamiliar words written in pinyin aloud; or

3) students write the pinyin for familiar words written in Chinese characters (this also

tests character knowledge).

Method 2) was not possible because I only had access to the students during class-

time. In order not to rely solely on one method, I chose methods 1) and 3). Given that none of

the participants were used to writing in pinyin, I chose a small number of target words for

testing - ten two-syllable words in total, five for method 1) (Task 5) and five for method 3)


21

(Task 4). I chose words containing pinyin letter combinations either explicitly taught in the

Jin Bu textbooks (Table 1) or not taught in the textbooks but whose pronunciations are

different from English (Table 2). The words selected are given in Appendix B.

4.3 Questionnaires

I also designed a questionnaire to gain an idea of students’ attitudes towards and use

of pinyin when learning vocabulary (answering Research Question 3), and to provide further

evidence relating to the first two research questions (for example, self-reported proficiency in

pinyin). The questionnaire also contained questions to screen out those students who already

spoke Mandarin or who had had significant exposure to Mandarin before attending the

school. The full questionnaire is given in Appendix C. Finally, I designed a simple

questionnaire for the teachers in order to garner important background information for

interpreting the results. This questionnaire can be found in Appendix D.

5 Procedure

Participants received no advance warning prior to taking the tests. They completed six tasks

in total: Task 1) Show knowledge of words presented in Chinese characters; Task 2) Show

knowledge of words read aloud; Task 3) Show knowledge of words written in pinyin; Task 4)

Write pinyin for words in Chinese characters; Task 5) Write pinyin for words read aloud;

Task 6) Questionnaire. The tasks were administered to each class during their regular lesson

time. Three separate task sheets were prepared for each class, one for each of the vocabulary

groups, as explained in 4.1.2 above. Students were randomly assigned to one of the three

groups.

Students completed the tasks in one sitting. Once all the students had completed one

task, they were allowed to move on to the next task. Students completed Tasks 1, 3 and 4

first. Words for Tasks 2 and 5 were then spoken by their regular class teacher so that the

students’ recall was not affected by an unfamiliar voice or accent. For Task 2, the teacher first

read the words in Set B for participants in Group 1, then Set C for Group 2, and finally Set A

for Group 3. The teacher read each word three times, pausing for around five seconds

between each reading. While one group was completing Task 2, the other groups completed


22

the questionnaire. Throughout the process, participants were not allowed to return to a

previously completed task to change their answers.

6 Scoring

The scoring for the vocabulary recall tasks is shown in Table 4 above. On the rare occasion

that a provided translation indicated correct recall of just one character (or syllable for spoken

and pinyin forms) of the two-character target item, I deducted 1 point from the score assigned

for that word (0.5 point for translation, 0.5 point for certainty).

For scoring the pinyin proficiency tests, I assigned 1 point for a correctly written

onset, 1 point for a correctly written rime and 1 point for a correctly written tone. Thus each

two-syllable word had a total score of 6 and Tasks 4 and 5 each had a total score of 30.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 4: Results

23

Chapter 4

Results

1 Introduction

In this chapter I first present an overview of each class (Section 2) before summarising

classroom attitudes towards vocabulary learning and pinyin as indicated by the questionnaire

results (Section 3). These two sections provide a contextual backdrop for the results of the

main tests, which I present in Sections 4 (vocabulary recall, Tasks 1 to 3) and 5 (pinyin

ability, Tasks 4 and 5). In Section 6, I report results of correlation analysis conducted on

vocabulary acquisition scores and pinyin ability scores.

2 Overview

2.1 Class characteristics

A general overview of the classes under study is provided in Table 7. In total, 78

students took part in the study. The results of seven of these were excluded from subsequent

analysis because of significant contact with Mandarin outside the school. Average scores in

school entrance examinations indicate that each year group consisted of one higher ability

class and one lower ability class. Also, each class had been taught by a different array of

Mandarin teachers during their time at the school.

Table 7 General overview of classes under study

Year 8 Year 9

Class 1 Class 2 Class 1 Class 2

Number of students participating in study

(number excluded from results) 20 (2) 24 (3) 19 (2) 15 (0)

Mean score in entrance examination

(mathematics, English, verbal reasoning) 112 128 128 114

Mean score in Chinese exam (reading,

writing, listening), May 2014 56% 68% 85% 66%

Mandarin teacher in Year 7 Teacher 1 Teacher 3 Teacher 3 Teacher 1

Mandarin teacher in Year 8 Teacher 1 Teacher 2 Teacher 1 Teacher 3

Mandarin teacher in Year 9 n/a n/a Teacher 1 Teacher 3


24

2.2 Teacher characteristics

Table 8 summarises information obtained from the teacher questionnaires. As is

evident from this information, each teacher had a slightly different method of introducing and

testing new vocabulary.

Table 8 Overview of teachers and teaching strategies

Teacher 1 Teacher 2 Teacher 3

Teaching order for

introducing new

vocabulary

1. Sound and meaning

2. pinyin

3. Characters

1. Sound and meaning

2. Characters

3. pinyin

1. Characters and

meaning

2. Sound and pinyin

Amount of pinyin taught

explicitly

Only the explanations

given in Jin Bu

Explanations in Jin Bu

plus a little more when

needed

Explanations in Jin Bu

plus a little more when

needed

Frequency of setting

vocabulary tests Once per week

At the end of each

chapter in Jin Bu

At the end of each

chapter in Jin Bu

Method of testing

vocabulary

1 Listen to Chinese, write

English;

2. Read characters, write

English;

3. Listen to English, write

Chinese in characters

3. Listen to Chinese, write

characters;

2. Read characters, write

English;

3. Listen to English and see

pinyin, write characters.

1. Listen to Chinese, write

characters

Students required to read

pinyin? Never Rarely Rarely

Students required to

write pinyin? Often* Rarely Rarely

*Only when students are asked to write examples of grammar points in their exercise books, because writing in

characters takes too long.

3 Student memorisation strategies and attitudes towards pinyin

3.1 Memorisation strategies

3.1.1 Overall picture

The most popular strategies among students for learning vocabulary were writing out

characters and looking at the pinyin form. 70.4% of respondents reported “always” or “often”

writing out characters when memorising new vocabulary, 62.0% reported always or often

looking at the pinyin form. 52.1% reported always or often saying the word aloud. On the

other hand, only 23.9% of students reported always or often writing out the pinyin form as a

memorisation technique, and 49.3% said that they “rarely” or “never” used this strategy.


25

3.1.2 Differences between classes

Figures 6 and 7 show students’ self-reported use of vocabulary memorisation

strategies by class. There are no obvious differences between the classes. This suggests that

students’ preferred learning strategies were not significantly affected by their teacher’s

approach to teaching or testing vocabulary in the classroom.

Figure 6 Self-reported use of pinyin-related vocabulary learning strategies, by class

Figure 7 Self-reported use of other vocabulary learning strategies, by class

3.2 Attitudes towards pinyin

Figures 8 and 9 show students’ reported attitudes regarding the usefulness of pinyin

for learning Chinese. Overall, only 30% of students felt that pinyin was “extremely useful”

for learning to read and write Chinese. On the other hand, 77% of students felt that pinyin

was extremely useful for learning to listen to and speak Chinese.


26

Figure 8 Self-reported opinions on usefulness of pinyin for learning to read and write

Chinese

Figure 9 Self-reported opinions on usefulness of pinyin for learning to listen to and speak

Chinese


27

4 Vocabulary recall tests

4.1 Test validity

4.1.1 Validity of responses

Student responses indicated that they understood the testing process and followed the

instructions correctly. All participants supplied numbers from 1-4 indicating depth of

knowledge for each of the test items in all three recall tests. When a 1 or 2 was supplied, a

translation was always provided. A small number of students occasionally supplied a

translation even though they had written 3 or 4, but most of these translations were incorrect

and therefore disregarded. For correct translations in these instances, I counted the score as 2

on the VDS (see Chapter 3, Table 4).

4.1.2 Validity of vocabulary sets

Due to the Latin square design of the test, comparability of the vocabulary recall test

results should not have been affected by any differences in difficulty level between the

vocabulary sets used for testing. However, given the small number of items tested and the

relatively small number of participants tested on each set/modality combination, equivalence

between the six sets of vocabulary is desirable for greater confidence in the validity of the

results.

Figure 10 shows the mean score for each vocabulary set used for testing. The darker

bars show the mean number of words in each set for which a correct English translation was

given. The lighter bars show the mean aggregate VDS scores. The average recall score was

2.63 words out of 7. The average VDS was 10.00 out of a maximum of 21. However,

multiple pairwise comparisons show that the differences in mean recall and VDS scores for

Year 8 Set B compared with all other sets were both significant at the p < .05 level.

Differences in score between all other vocabulary sets were not significant.

Therefore, since Year 8 Set B was slightly more “difficult” than the other sets, I

weighted Set B results in all modalities using a simple weighting coefficient (1.25 for recall

scores and 1.4 for VDS) to reduce the impact of difficulty effects in Year 8’s results.


28

Figure 10 Comparison of results for the six vocabulary sets tested

4.2 Vocabulary test results

4.2.1 Overall

Overall mean recall and VDS scores by modality are shown in Table 9. On average,

students could correctly recall the meanings of around three words out of seven presented in

phonological (aural) or pinyin form, but could only recall the meanings of around two words

out of seven presented in orthographic form. A similar ratio was evident in the VDS scores.

One-way ANOVAs conducted on recall scores (F(2,210) = 6.839, p < .005) and VDS scores

(F(2,210) = 9.612, p < .001) showed there were significant group effects for modality. Eta

squared values of 0.061 and 0.084 respectively indicated a ‘medium’ effect size in Cohen’s

(1988) system. Post-hoc Tukey HSD tests with a familywise significance set at .05 revealed

two homogeneous subsets for both pure recall and VDS scores: 1) characters; and 2) aural

and pinyin. The difference in scores for aural and pinyin modalities were not significant

(p > .7).

Pure recall

VDS

Year 8 vocabulary Year 9 vocabulary


29

Table 9 Overall mean recall and VDS scores by modality

Pure recall score VDS score

Modality Mean SD Mean SD

Characters (N = 71) 2.159 1.630 9.00 3.121

Aural (N = 71) 2.946 1.706 10.69 3.759

Pinyin (N = 71) 3.158 1.749 11.25 3.060

4.2.2 By year group

Figures 11 and 12 show mean recall scores and mean VDS scores for each modality

by year group. Both Year 8 and Year 9 performed worse on vocabulary given in orthographic

form. However, Year 8 showed higher rates of recall for vocabulary given aurally than for

vocabulary in pinyin, whereas the opposite was true for Year 9.

A one-way ANOVA conducted on the Year 8 scores showed significant group effects

for modality (F(2, 114) = 4.964, p < .01 for mean recall and F(2, 144) = 4.461, p < .05 for

mean VDS). A post-hoc Tukey HSD test showed that the mean scores for both recall and

VDS in the character modality were significantly lower than the scores for both the other

modalities (p < .05). Respective eta squared values of 0.081 and 0.073 indicated ‘medium’

effects (Cohen, 1988). The difference between the scores for aural and pinyin modalities were

statistically insignificant.

Figure 11 Mean recall by year group Figure 12 Mean VDS by year

group


30

A one-way ANOVA conducted on the Year 9 VDS scores showed significant group

effects for modality (F(2, 93) = 4.670, p < .05, a medium effect in Cohen’s (1988) system

(eta squared = 0.091). Differences in pure recall scores were not significant at the p < .05

level. A post-hoc Tukey HSD test conducted on the VDS scores showed that only the

difference between character modality and aural modality was statistically significant (p

< .01).

4.2.3 By class

Figures 13 and 14 show mean recall and VDS scores by class. For Year 8,

independent sample t-tests show that the higher ability class (Class 2) performed significantly

better than the lower ability class (Class 1) in both pure recall (t(37) = -2.460, p < .05) and

VDS (t(37) = -2.901, p < .01) of vocabulary presented in characters. There was no significant

difference in their performance on recall of vocabulary given in aural and pinyin forms.

Figure 13 Mean recall scores by class


31

Figure 14 Mean VDS scores by class

For Year 9, the higher ability class (Class 1) outperformed the lower ability class

(Class 2) on both vocabulary recall and VDS in all modalities. Multiple pairwise comparisons

show that the differences in scores between the two classes are all significant at the p < .05

level, except for the mean VDS scores for vocabulary presented in Chinese characters.

Overall, VDS scores for vocabulary given in characters most closely reflected the

general ability levels of each class.

4.2.4 By individual words – atypical cases

An inspection of recall scores for individual vocabulary items showed that some items

bucked the general trend of lower recall/VDS rates for vocabulary presented in orthographic

form than for vocabulary presented in the other two modalities. These items are listed in

Table 10.


32

Table 10 Atypical vocabulary items showing higher recall for visual form

Mean VDS for… (max = 3)

Word pinyin Meaning orthographic

form aural form pinyin form

德国 dé guó ‘Germany’ 2.23 1.77 1.62

花园 huā yuán ‘garden’ 2.09 1.65 1.95

数学 shù xué ‘mathematics’ 1.97 1.26 1.35

海边 hǎi biān ‘seaside’ 1.85 1.69 1.62

手机 shǒu jī ‘mobile phone’ 1.36 1.20 1.18

照片 zhào piàn ‘photograph’ 0.65 0.45 0.38

5 Pinyin ability tests

5.1 Test validity

All students provided pinyin forms bearing resemblance to the Mandarin

pronunciation for all words in Task 5 (unfamiliar words presented aurally). All participants

provided tones marks for the majority of syllables and all but one or two tone marks were

clearly legible. This indicates that students were comfortable with the testing procedure for

Task 5.

Task 4 was designed on the assumption that most students would be able to read the

five target items, which were given in characters. This turned out not to be the case.

Participants only provided pinyin forms for words or syllables that they recognised, and many

answers were left blank. Table 11 shows the mean number of characters/syllables in Task 4

for which participants provided a pinyin transcription that was clearly based on the correct

pronunciation of the target syllable.

Table 11 Mean number of characters in Task 4 whose pronunciations were recalled (i.e.

OPRI, see below)

Class Mean number of characters

recalled correctly (max=10) N SD

Year 8, Class 1 2.33 18 1.414

Year 8, Class 2 4.48 21 2.482

Year 9, Class 1 7.76 17 1.786

Year 9, Class 2 5.67 15 1.759

Total 4.97 71 2.731


33

I recalculated the Task 4 pinyin ability scores based solely on the syllables for which

transcriptions were provided. However, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient showed no

significant (p < .05) correlation between the resulting Task 4 pinyin ability scores and pinyin

ability scores based on Task 5. I therefore suspect that Task 4 actually tested more for

memory recall of the correct pinyin transcription than for accuracy in transcribing

phonological forms. Therefore, for subsequent pinyin ability scores and correlations, I rely

entirely on Task 5 as a measure of pinyin ability.

Nevertheless, the results for Task 4 were still useful. The number of syllables recalled

correctly provided a useful measure of students’ ability to link characters to their

pronunciations. I henceforth refer to this measure as the “Orthographic-Phonological Recall

Index (OPRI).”

A one-way ANOVA conducted on the mean OPRI scores in Table 11 showed small

but highly significant group effects for class: F(3,67) = 23.992, p < .001. A post-hoc Tukey

HSD test showed that differences in means between all individual classes were significant (p

< .02) , apart from between the higher ability Year 8 Class 2 and the lower ability Year 9

Class 2.

5.2 Measured pinyin ability (Task 5)

Pinyin ability scores for each class are shown in Figure 15. Individual pairwise

comparisons show that mean pinyin accuracy for the Year 9 lower ability class was

significantly higher than for the Year 8 lower ability class (t(31) = -2.316, p < .05) and that

mean pinyin accuracy for the Year 9 higher ability class was significantly higher than for the

Year 8 higher ability class (t(36) = -3.696, p < .01).

When considered by year groups, mean pinyin ability for Year 8 was 0.553

(SD=0.139, N=39) and mean pinyin ability for Year 9 was 0.681 (SD=0.184, N=32). An

independent samples t-test indicated that the difference between the scores was highly

significant: t(69)=-4.302, p < .001.

Interestingly, the Year 8 lower ability class had a higher average pinyin accuracy

score than the Year 8 higher ability class. However, an independent samples t-test showed

that the difference between these two scores was not significant at the p < .05 level.


34

Figure 15 Measured pinyin accuracy by class, similar ability classes juxtaposed

5.3 Self-reported pinyin ability

In the questionnaire I included a question asking for self-reported ability in pinyin, on

a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). However, this question proved inadequate. 87% of

students rated themselves as either 3 or 4 out of 5, far too crude a distinction to be able to use

for correlational analysis.

6 Correlations

In this section, I report on correlations between the various measures. In all calculations,

correlations using pure recall scores and VDS scores were very similar, but because VDS

correlations were always slightly higher and slightly more significant, I only report

correlations for VDS.

6.1 Pinyin ability and VDS correlations

To test whether there were any relationships between the various measures, scatter

plots were produced and Pearson’s correlation coefficients calculated. A summary of the


35

Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between all measures among all students is given in Table

12.

Table 12 Correlations between vocabulary recall measures and pinyin accuracy, N=71

VDS

(characters)

VDS

(aural)

VDS

(pinyin)

VDS (aural) .412**

VDS (pinyin) .525** .470**

pinyin accuracy (Task 5) .097 .235* .156

** p < .001

* p < .05

Correlations between VDS for the three different modalities are unsurprising, since all

three scores measure knowledge of the same words.

The only VDS score which correlates at a significant (p < .05) level with pinyin

ability is that for vocabulary encountered in phonological (aural) form. This is a small effect:

r(71)=.235. A scatter plot showing the association is given in Figure 16.

There are two outliers, both Year 8 students who performed poorly on the pinyin

ability task but still showed high VDS for aural form. If these two outliers are removed, the

correlation between the two measure becomes r(69) = .367, p = .002, a highly significant

medium effect.

Figure 16 Scatter plot showing association between pinyin ability and VDS for vocabulary

given aurally, with line of best fit. Two outliers are indicated by dashed boxes


36

6.2 Pinyin, VDS and OPRI correlations by year group

Correlations of all measures by year group are shown in Tables 13 and 14. Again, I

have excluded the two outliers shown above from the Year 8 data.

In both years, the only modality for VDS that significantly (p < .05) correlates with

pinyin ability is aural form. It is a medium effect in both years (.25 < r < .5).

Also in both years, OPRI correlates most strongly with VDS for vocabulary presented

in orthographic form, a large effect (r > .5).

Table 13 Year 8 correlations (N=37)

VDS

(characters)

VDS

(aural)

VDS

(pinyin)

OPRI

VDS (aural) .343*

VDS (pinyin) .586** .546**

OPRI (Task 4) .601** .255 .312

pinyin accuracy (Task 5) .126 .464** .155 .036

** p < .001

* p < .05

Table 14 Year 9 correlations (N=31)

VDS

(characters)

VDS

(aural)

VDS

(pinyin)

OPRI

VDS (aural) .585**

VDS (pinyin) .445* .433*

OPRI (Task 4) .625** .527* .577**

pinyin accuracy (Task 5) .214 .410* .317 .416*

** p < .001

* p < .05

6.3 Individual test item correlations

Individual test items were also compared to see if there were any correlations between

VDS scores for the various modalities in which they were tested. A scatter plot is shown in

Figure 17. A strong, highly significant correlation was found between the scores for aural and

pinyin modalities: r(42) = .797, p < .001. There were no significant correlations between

scores for vocabulary given in characters and the same vocabulary given in either of the other

two modalities.


37

Figure 17 Scatter plot of mean VDS scores for the 42 test items in aural and pinyin

modalities

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 5: Discussion

38

Chapter 5

Discussion

1 Introduction

This study was conducted in order to answer the broad research question of whether higher

overall proficiency in pinyin results in better retention of phonological or orthographic forms

of new vocabulary. The main hypothesis that I tried to test was whether a good grasp of

pinyin results in better recall of aural vocabulary. This hypothesis rests on the assumption that

beginning students tend to rely on pinyin in order to remember phonological forms of new

vocabulary. I also looked at the secondary question of whether accurate pinyin skills are

related to recall of vocabulary presented in orthographic form.

I first discuss findings that relate to the main assumption. I show that the evidence

gathered largely supports the notion that beginning students of Chinese do indeed rely on

pinyin when memorising new vocabulary, regardless of the pedagogical approach adopted.

Secondly, I discuss the results relating to the key hypothesis. I argue that whilst there is

evidence to show a relationship between pinyin skills and recall of aural vocabulary, it does

not necessarily constitute a cause-effect relationship. Finally, I argue that the lack of

association between pinyin ability and recall of vocabulary presented in characters suggest

that these two skills are unrelated.

2 Evidence for learners’ reliance on pinyin

The assumption that beginning learners tend to rely on pinyin when memorising vocabulary

was supported by answers to questions relating to vocabulary memorisation techniques and

attitudes towards the usefulness of pinyin. Recall of pinyin forms and pinyin accuracy scores

also provided evidence in support of the assumption.

2.1 Self-reported vocabulary memorisation techniques

Overall, 62.0% of students involved in the study reported often or always looking at

the pinyin form when memorising Chinese vocabulary. This figure was similar for each of the


39

four classes studied, even though two classes were introduced to new vocabulary in pinyin

before characters, and the other two were introduced to characters before pinyin. Only 15%

reported rarely or never looking at the pinyin form. These findings are similar to those of Yin

(2003) and Ma’s (2007) studies looking at memorisation strategies used by university

students of L2 Chinese.

More participants reported referring to pinyin when memorising vocabulary (62.4%)

than saying the words aloud when memorising vocabulary (52.1%). Furthermore, only 15.5%

of participants reported regularly writing out pinyin when learning vocabulary, compared

with 70.4% who reported regularly writing out the Chinese characters. These figures suggest

that students tend to read pinyin for learning phonological forms and to write characters for

learning orthographic forms. However, students were not asked whether they listened to

recordings of vocabulary to aid memorisation, so it is impossible to say whether they relied

on pinyin more than other strategies for learning phonological forms.

2.2 Self-reported attitudes towards pinyin

Overall, 77% of students felt that pinyin was extremely useful for learning to listen to

and speak Chinese, whereas only 30% felt it was useful for learning to read and write it.

Again, there appeared to be no relationship between students’ attitudes towards pinyin

usefulness and the particular class they were in. This is congruent with their reported

memorisation strategies and confirms the assumption that students tend to rely on pinyin

when memorising phonological forms but not orthographic forms.

2.3 Recall of vocabulary presented in pinyin

As reported in Chapter 4, 4.2.2, participants’ VDS score of vocabulary presented in

pinyin form was roughly the same as their score for vocabulary presented aurally. On

average, students were able to recall the meanings of around three out of every seven words

presented in either modality. Furthermore, as reported in Chapter 4, Section 6.3, correlations

between VDS for aural forms and pinyin forms by target item were extremely high,

indicating that if a word’s phonological form was recognised and linked to the correct

meaning, so was its pinyin form. This suggests that the students were very familiar with

vocabulary presented in pinyin form, consistent with the assumption that they relied on pinyin

when learning the phonological form of new vocabulary.


40

2.4 Measured pinyin ability

Finally, measured pinyin ability was significantly higher among Year 9 students than

Year 8 students, both when comparing the year groups as a whole and when comparing

classes of similar ability across the two years (Chapter 4, Section 5.2). Although the results of

a cross-sectional study such as this one are not as reliable as those of a longitudinal study,

they are nevertheless consistent with the idea that secondary school students improve in their

pinyin ability even without explicit instruction. This in turn suggests that they refer a lot to

pinyin in their learning, supporting my key assumption.

3 Relationship between pinyin and recognition/recall of aural form

I now turn to evidence for my main hypothesis, that beginning learners of L2 Chinese show

stronger recall of vocabulary encountered aurally if they have a better grasp of pinyin.

3.1 Evidence from measured pinyin ability and recall performance

VDS scores of vocabulary presented aurally had a significant, moderate correlation

with measured pinyin ability (r(69) = .367, p < .01). In other words, students who could

transcribe pinyin more accurately showed higher rates of retention of the aural form of

vocabulary.

This could be construed as evidence to show that a good grasp of pinyin does indeed

help with better retention of aural vocabulary. This would support Ehri’s (1992) theory of

word learning, and DCT, both of which hold that memory of a word’s phonological form will

be strengthened if it is stored in more than one modality (in this case, auditory and visual),

assuming that the visual form closely resembles the auditory form and is thus able to

reinforce it, as is the case with pinyin.

However, this correlation does not necessarily indicate a cause-effect relationship. A

weakness of my methodology is that both pinyin ability and recall of aural form were tested

via the medium of listening. Thus the association between the two scores could simply be the

result of a third common factor such as listening ability. Better listening skills resulting from

a more accurate awareness of Mandarin phonology could result both in greater accuracy in

pinyin transcription and in enhanced recall of vocabulary encountered aurally. In order to


41

more confidently establish a direct link between pinyin ability and aural vocabulary recall,

pinyin ability would need to be tested in other ways, for example by asking participants to

read pinyin aloud or to identify correct pinyin transcriptions in a multiple choice format.

As noted above, there was also an extremely high and significant correlation between

each word’s VDS score for aural form and its VDS score for pinyin form. This cannot,

however, be used as evidence to show that a greater familiarity with pinyin will help the

student to acquire the aural form of vocabulary. Given the similarities between pinyin and

English, it is unsurprising that if students can recognise the aural form of a word, they can

also recognise its pinyin form, and vice versa.

3.2 Evidence from vocabulary teaching approaches and recall performance

Further evidence for a relationship between pinyin ability and retention of the aural

form of new vocabulary can be found by comparing mean recall and VDS scores by class

(Figures 13 and 14) and measured pinyin ability by class (Figure 15). The lower ability class

in Year 8 (Class 1) was taught by Teacher 1, the only teacher who always introduced aural

and pinyin forms of new vocabulary before introducing Chinese characters. This particular

class had aural and pinyin VDS scores that matched the higher ability class in Year 8 (Figure

14). Additionally, this class’s mean pinyin ability was higher than the higher ability class’s

(Figure 15). Together, this suggests that an increased emphasis on pinyin on the part of the

teacher may have helped not only to improve pinyin transcription skills, but also to increase

retention of spoken Chinese vocabulary.

However, in Year 9, the lower ability class (Class 2) showed the same pinyin ability

as the higher ability class, yet their aural and pinyin VDS scores were lower. This suggests

that for students who have been learning Chinese for longer, the relationship between pinyin

ability and retention of aural forms of vocabulary is not as strong. This is also reflected in

Year 9’s lower and less significant r value for correlations between pinyin proficiency and

VDS scores for aural modality (Table 14). This is consistent with Chung’s (2008) findings

that pinyin may not be as useful for more proficient learners of Chinese when it comes to

learning vocabulary.


42

4 Relationships between pinyin and recognition/recall of orthographic form

Across the board, recall of orthographic forms was significantly lower than that of

phonological and pinyin forms. This supports the idea that, in the DCT model, native English

speakers find it difficult to associate visual input such as Chinese characters with logogens in

the verbal system.

With regard to the relationship between pinyin ability and recall of orthographic form,

there appears to be no association between the two. There were no significant correlations

between VDS or recall for vocabulary presented in characters and pinyin ability. These

results imply that for L2 learners of Chinese, higher pinyin ability neither helps nor hinders

the acquisition of orthographic forms. They imply that, insofar as pinyin ability is a measure

of phonological awareness, Chinese L2 phonological awareness is not related to reading

proficiency. Several studies have shown the same thing for L1 Chinese readers (Huang and

Hanley, 1995; Zhou et al., 2012).

Despite this, our results show that the ability to recall the pronunciation of words

encountered in Chinese characters (OPRI) correlated most highly and most significantly with

VDS scores for the character modality (Tables 13 and 14). This suggests that students’ ability

to recall the meaning of characters is related to their ability to recall the pronunciation,

substantiating Everson’s (1998) findings. However, the existence of individual words which

showed higher recall rates for visual form than for aural/pinyin form indicates that beginning

learners of Chinese do sometimes employ a “direct” route from orthographic form to

meaning, as Perfetti et al. (2005) suggest under the LCM (see Chapter 2, Section 2.2.2).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8098601_The_Lexical_Constituency_Model_Some_Implications_of_Research_on_Chinese_for_General_Theories_of_Reading?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-3dd450c39e1d2119045d102d2255744a-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2ODk4MjQ2MDtBUzoxNjk3MDU1MjAyNDY3ODRAMTQxNzQ3MjM1NzcxOA==

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Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 6: Conclusions

43

Chapter 6

Conclusions

1 Summary of research findings

In summary, this study firstly provides evidence in support of the notion that secondary

school students of L2 Chinese tend to rely on pinyin when learning phonological forms of

new vocabulary, in spite of a lack of emphasis on pinyin both on the part of the teachers and

the textbooks. Secondly, the results indicate that pinyin proficiency is moderately associated

with successful recall of vocabulary encountered aurally. This finding is consistent with the

hypothesis that greater pinyin ability can assist in learning phonological forms of new

vocabulary. More extensive longitudinal studies are needed to provide evidence for a direct

causative link between the two skills. Thirdly, no association was found between pinyin

proficiency and recall of vocabulary encountered in orthographic form. A higher proficiency

in pinyin appears not to have a detrimental effect on recalling the meanings of words

presented in Chinese characters.

2 Pedagogical implications

The issue of how important pinyin is for L2 learners of Chinese to acquire the orthographic

and phonological forms of new vocabulary is of primary importance for pedagogists and

practitioners. Regardless of whether pinyin skills are directly or only indirectly associated

with the acquisition of phonological forms, it seems likely that a greater initial emphasis on

learning the Chinese sound system would help L2 learners to acquire the phonological forms

of new vocabulary. The systematic teaching of the pinyin system is one way in which this can

be achieved, particularly in the light of the fact that students appear to rely on pinyin when

learning vocabulary even when their teachers and textbooks pay little attention to it.

However, given the limited amount of class-time that secondary school students have for

learning a second language, pedagogical decisions are often driven by pragmatism.

Systematic teaching of pinyin limits the lesson time available for the vital task of teaching

students Chinese characters.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Chapter 6: Conclusions

44

3 Limitations of study and ideas for future research

There are many limitations to this study. Firstly, only a small number of words were used for

testing vocabulary knowledge. Using more words would allow conclusions to be drawn with

more confidence. Secondly, the two methods used for testing pinyin ability were not ideal.

One method proved almost useless, and the other method had too few probes to produce a

thoroughly reliable, accurate measure. In future studies, a wider range of methods should be

used, such as testing pinyin reading ability by having participants listen to unfamiliar words

in Chinese and choosing the correct pinyin form out of a number of possible answers.

Finally, a cross-sectional study such as this can only provide an initial “snapshot” of

the situation. It merely paves the way for a more reliable and wide-ranging longitudinal study

to test the hypotheses in a more robust manner. Hopefully, further research will provide the

answers needed to determine whether a greater investment in teaching pinyin and

pronunciation at the outset is worth it in the long run.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition References

45

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Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix A

50

Appendix A

Vocabulary recall test items

Words selected for the vocabulary recall tests are given in the following table. Category

descriptions are provided after the table.

Year 8 Year 9

Word

difficulty Set A Set B Set C Set A Set B Set C

Category

1

Word 历史

‘history’

照片

‘photograph’

农村

‘countryside’

农村

‘countryside’

照片

‘photograph’

体育

‘sports/PE’

Source* JB1 (4) JB2 (2) JB2 (1) JB2 (1) JB2 (2) JB1 (4)

Category

2

Word 游戏

‘game’

滑板

‘skateboard’

地理

‘geography’

浴室

‘bathroom’

地理

‘geography’

滑板

‘skateboard’

Source JB1 (3) JB1 (3) JB1 (4) JB2 (3) JB1 (4) JB1 (3)

Category

3

Word 兔子

‘rabbit’

数学

‘maths’

爱好

‘hobby’

数学

‘maths’

饺子

‘dumpling’

城市

‘city’


Category

4

Word 天气

‘weather’

饺子

‘dumpling’

聪明

‘clever’

青菜

‘cabbage’

手机

‘cell phone’

书架

‘bookshelf’


Category

5

Word 鸡肉

‘chicken’

面包

‘bread’

德国

‘Germany’

牛奶

‘milk’

天气

‘weather’

商人

‘businessman’


Category

6

Word 运动

‘exercise’

多少

‘how much’

果汁

‘fruit juice’

东西

‘things’

电脑

‘computer’

果汁

‘fruit juice’


Category

7

Word 美丽

‘beautiful’

海边

‘seaside’

衬衣

‘shirt’

衬衣

‘shirt’

花园

‘garden’

公斤

‘kilo’


*Source: Book (JB = Jin Bu) and chapter (in parentheses) in which the word is first introduced.

Category descriptions for word difficulty

Category 1 words Neither of the characters making up the word occur in any other item

of vocabulary encountered up until the point of testing, and students

have not learnt to write either of the characters.

Category 2 words One of the characters making up the word does not occur in any other

item of vocabulary learnt up until this point, and students cannot write

either character.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix A

51

Category 3, 4 words One of the characters making up the word does not occur in any other

item of vocabulary encountered up until this point, and students only

know how to write one of the characters. Category 3 words are older

(i.e. are introduced in Jin Bu 1 Chapter 4 or before for Year 8 students

or in Jin Bu 2 Chapter 1 or before for Year 9 students), Category 4

words are newer.

Category 5 words Both of the characters making up the word also occur in other

vocabulary items already encountered, and students have learnt how

to write one of the characters.

Category 6, 7 words One of the characters making up the word does not occur in any other

item of vocabulary encountered up until this point, and students have

already learnt how to write both of the characters. Category 6 words

are older (i.e. are introduced in Jin Bu 1 Chapter 5 or before for Year

8 students or in Jin Bu 2 Chapter 1 or before for Year 9 students),

Category 7 words are newer.

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix B

52

Appendix B

Pinyin proficiency test items

1. Pinyin test part 1

(write the pinyin form for familiar vocabulary presented in Chinese characters)

Word Meaning pinyin Mandarin pronunciation (IPA) Target sounds

饭馆 ‘restaurant’ fàn guǎn [fan⁵¹ kwan²¹⁴] -

喜欢 ‘like’ xǐ huān [ɕi²¹ hwan⁵⁵] x-

中文 ‘Chinese’ zhōng wén [tʂoŋ⁵⁵ wən³⁵] zh-, -ong

网球 ‘tennis’ wǎng qiú [waŋ²¹ tɕʰjɔu³⁵] q-, -iu

生日 ‘birthday’ shēng rì [ʂəŋ⁵⁵ ʐʅ⁵¹] r-, -i

2. Pinyin test part 2

(write the pinyin form for unfamiliar vocabulary spoken aloud in Chinese)

Word Meaning pinyin Mandarin pronunciation (IPA) Target sounds

帮助 ‘help’ bāng zhù [paŋ⁵⁵ tʂu⁵¹] zh-

纯净 ‘pure’ chún jìng [tʂʰʊn³⁵ tɕiŋ⁵¹] -un, j-

缺点 ‘drawback’ quē diǎn [tɕʰyɛ⁵⁵ tjɛn²¹⁴] qu-, -e, -ian

词汇 ‘vocabulary’ cí huì [tsʰɿ³⁵ hwɛi⁵¹] c-, -i, -ui

其实 ‘actually’ qí shí [tɕʰi³⁵ ʂʅ³⁵] q-, sh-, -i

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix C

53

Appendix C

Student Response Sheet

Sample response sheet for participants in Group 1

Task 1 Write a number in each box: 1 = I know what this word means; 2 = I think I know what this word means; 3 = this word is familiar but I can’t remember what it means; 4 = I don’t remember ever seeing this word. If you have written 1 or 2, please write the English meaning next to the box.

1. 美丽

2. 运动

3. 鸡肉

4. 天气

5. 兔子

6. 游戏

7. 历史

Task 2: Listening Write a number in each box for the words that you hear.

1 = I know what this word means; 2 = I think I know what this word means; 3 = this word is familiar but I can’t remember what it means; 4 = I don’t remember ever hearing this word before. If you have written 1 or 2, please write the English meaning next to the box.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.


54

Task 3 Write a number in each box. 1 = I know what this word means; 2 = I think I know what this word means; 3 = this word is familiar but I can’t remember what it means; 4 = I don’t remember ever seeing this word. If you have written 1 or 2, please write the English meaning next to the box.

1. hǎi biān

2. duō shǎo

3. miàn bāo

4. jiǎo zi

5. shù xué

6. huá bǎn

7. zhào piàn

Task 4

Please write the pinyin for these words in Chinese: (write your tone marks as clearly as possible)

1. 喜欢

2. 生日

3. 网球

4. 中文

5. 饭馆

Task 5 Please write the pinyin for the words that you hear in Chinese: (write your tone marks as clearly as possible)

1.

2.


55

3.

4.

5.

Questionnaire Please answer the following questions. Tick the boxes that apply to you. 1) Do you speak Mandarin at home?

Yes No 2) Do you speak another Chinese dialect at home (for example, Cantonese or

Hokkien)?

Yes No 3) How much Mandarin had you learnt before you came to Brighton College?

None A little A lot

4) Rate your ability to read pinyin aloud on a scale of 1 to 5.

1 2 3 4 5 (poor) (average) (excellent)

5) How useful do you think pinyin is for learning to read and write Chinese?

Useless A little bit useful Extremely useful

6) How useful do you think pinyin is for learning to listen to and speak Chinese?

Useless A little bit useful Extremely useful

7) When you try to memorise Chinese vocabulary, how often do you say the Chinese words aloud?

Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always


56

8) When you try to memorise Chinese vocabulary, how often do you write out the

characters?


9) When you try to memorise Chinese vocabulary, how often do you look at the

pinyin?


10) When you try to memorise Chinese vocabulary, how often do you write out the

pinyin?


Thank you so much for your help!

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix D

57

Appendix D

Teacher Questionnaire

1. When you introduce new vocabulary for this class, in what order do you usually introduce the following elements? Use numbers 1-3 to show the order.

(In the example, the teacher first teaches the meaning and the sound of the target word, then they show the written form in characters and the pinyin simultaneously.) Example Your method The meaning of the word

The sound of the word

The written form of the word in characters

The pinyin form of the word

Any comments?

2. How much of the pinyin system do you teach for this class? None Only the short explanations Extra aspects that Entire

given in Jin Bu 1 need explaining system Any comments?

3. How do you usually introduce new vocabulary for this class? (tick any that apply) In isolation In context With pictures With English (e.g. sentences) or realia translations

4. Roughly how often do you set this class pure vocabulary tests? Once per Once per Once per Very Never week chapter unit rarely

1

1

2

2

Role of pinyin in Chinese vocabulary acquisition Appendix D

58

5. How do you usually test vocabulary for this class? (tick any that apply) Say Chinese, Give characters, Give English, Give pinyin, they write English they write English they write chars they write English Say Chinese, Give characters, Give English, Give pinyin, they write chars they write pinyin they write pinyin they write chars

6. Do you ask your students to read pinyin aloud? Never Rarely Often 7. Do you ask your students to write pinyin? Never Rarely Often

Thank you for your help!

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