Transcript Different Influences of Visual-Spatial Skills on Chinese

Different Influences of Visual-Spatial Skills on
Chinese and English Word Recognition:
The Example of Fourth-Grade Students In
Taiwan.
Authors:
(1) Ya-Chin Chuang, Certified Clinical Psychologist
(doctoral student),
National Taiwan Normal University, Email:
[email protected]
(2) Chien-Ju Chang, professor,
National Taiwan Normal University
Present in 4th MultiLingual Education Conference
Thailand, 2013. 11.6 - 8
Thailand v.s. Taiwan

Thanks the conference scholarship committee
and RILCA Mahidol University for this trip!
Multilingual Environment?
Language education in Taiwan

Chinese/dialects: Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka

Share the same spelling system: Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao


Eg.囡仔(Taiwanese)、細妹(Hakka)
English versus. Chinese

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Share different spelling systems and characters
English as a foreign language (English curriculum
since kindergarten or 1st grade )
The objectives of the research

To clarify the key elements
(Auditory/phonological awareness,
Vocabulary, Visual-spatial/Morphology
awareness) and their relationship in
mother-tongue based mulitiligual (Chinese,
dialects and English) education.
Biliteracy development
Phonological
awareness
Is
well-developed
by the 3rd grade,
Around 8 y/o
VisualSpatial
Skills
English
word
recognition
Vocabulary
Chinese
word
recognition
Reading Development (Chall 1983)
Stage 0 0-6 y/o
Preschool
Pre-reading stage
Stage 1 6-7 y/o
First-Second grade
Initial reading stage
Stage 2 7-8 y/o
Second-Third grade
Confirmation, fluent, ungluing from print
Stage 3 8-14 y/o
Reading for learning
3A 9-11 y/o
Fourth-Sixth grade
3B 12-14 y/o
Junior high school
Stage 4 14-18 y/o
Senior high school
Multiple viewpoint
Stage 5 18 y/o up
College
Construct and reconstruction –
a world view
Visual-spatial skills and
Morphology in different languages

Morphology in English:



Morphology in Chinese:



Bi-: biligual, biliteracy
-lism: multiculturalism, feminism
手: 打、招、拍、拿、捏
口：呼、吸、咨
Visual-Spatial skills: the capacity to understand
and idealize visual symbolizations and spatial
association in learning
Visual-Spatial Skills


How to analyze this character?
How many seconds do you need to
remember and re-draw this character
freehand?
The hypotheses of the research


Vocabulary is the semantic knowledge of the
language and is expected to be positively
correlated to both Chinese and English word
recognition.
Visual-spatial skills are more correlated to
Chinese word recognition, rather than
English word recognition.
The tools to measure the
individual differences
The psychological tests applied in the research
Biliteracy development
Phonological
awareness
Is
well-developed
by the 3rd grade,
Around 8 y/o
VisualSpatial
Skills
English
word
recognition
Vocabulary
Chinese
word
recognition
th
4
Participants:
grade
students in Elementary
school, who passed the
phonological awareness test
(1) Ray-Complex Figure Test(RCFT)
(2) Vocabulary (VOC)
(3) English word recognition test
(4) Chinese word recognition test
Biliteracy development
VisualSpatial
Skills
English
word
recognition
Vocabulary
Chinese
word
recognition
Measurement tools:
Word Recognition Test
Chinese word recognition test




請
謝
對
身
又 真 你
不 可 好
媽 爸 妹
課 上 湧
English word recognition test:
dog
cat
dear
thing
bad
hat
thank
real
please
up
class
father
body right
mothe
r
you
Biliteracy development
VisualSpatial
Skills
English
word
recognition
Vocabulary
Chinese
word
recognition
Measurement tools:
Vocabulary Test of
Wechsler Intelligence Scale of Children 4th version
Biliteracy development
VisualSpatial
Skills
English
word
recognition
Vocabulary
Chinese
word
recognition
Measurement tools:
Ray-Complex Figure Test, RCFT
Similar to this, but it’s a nonword

RCFT was applied to
assess the child’s
visual-spatial skills
and visual memory as
well.
Result
Correlation analysis
Vocabulary
Chinese
Word
Recognition
English
- Phonology
English
-Semantics
Vocabulary
1
Chinese Word
Recognition
0.28
1
English
-Phonology
0.35*
0.48**
1
English
-Semantics
0.37*
0.45**
0.96**
1
English
-Total
0.35*
0.46**
0.99**
0.98**
English
-Total
1
*p < .05.; **p < .01
Multiple Regression analysis
Vocabulary Copy
Immediately Delayed
Recall
Recall
Recognition F
Chinese
0.20
0.04
0.04
-1.207
0.18
word
Recognition
1.29
0.217 0.217
-2.647
1.07
0.36
1.11
-0.34
0.17
1.56
2.13
0.54
-0.71
0.34
0.17
English
Word
Recognition
Sig.
2.86* 0.03*
1.57
*p < .05.
0.19
Discussion-1

Vocabulary is related to English, but not
related to Chinese. The higher vocabulary
score, the more English words recognized.


4th grade reading stage: read to learn, Chinese
character coding is automatic. On the contrary,
children are still not familiar with English coding
system.
Implication: Increasing children’s oral
vocabulary in their mother tongue might be
helpful to recognize the second language.
Discussion-2

RCFT scores could explain the performance of
Chinese word recognition, rather than English
word recognition.


Visual-Spatial skills are more important for
recognizing Chinese character than for recognizing
English word.
Implication: Visual-Spatial skills are more
important for ideographical character (eg.
Chinese) than spelling language (e.g. English)
Thanks for your listening!