Investigation and Analysis of Chinese Character Errors in Intermediate Chinese Learners

范爽

1 Introduction

Over the past decades， Chinese characters acquisition has received unprecedented attention （Packard et al， 2006）.  And there is a common phenomenon that most of the foreign learners face the barrier of learning Chinese characters to some extent， especially those who from alphabetic writing system and even some of them have suffered from learned helplessness during Chinese Character acquisition. On the other hand， as for Chinese teachers， the high frequency of errors of Chinese characters made by foreign students and their lack of the orthographic awareness may be a hot topic. In addition， it is an indisputable fact that Chinese characters teaching is underemphasized around the word and the pedagogics should to be updated in order to improve learners Chinese characters written application.

Based on the problems mentioned above and under the guidance of the linguistic theories， two pilot surveys were done to show the frequency of different types of Chinese characters errors made by foreign learners and looks for the difficulties they face during their learning process， which is conducive to for Chinese teachers to explore targeted teaching instructions.

2 The Chinese writing system

2.1 Definition

In this research， my working definition of characters is as follows.

“Chinese characters， also known as hanzi（漢字）， is the writing form of the Chinese language.”（Xing， J. Z. 2006： 156）. Although there are a variety of dialects in China， it has only one written language， which help the country holding together.

In linguistics， according to J. Richard et al， （2002：184）， “an error is the use of a word， speech act or grammatical items in such a way it seems imperfect and significant of an incomplete learning”. It is very common for L2 learners to make errors in writing Chinese characters and the targeted teaching methods could be explored by analysizing the frequency of different types of error that L2 learners made when they write Chinese characters.

The set of conventions in use in a given writing system is defined by the orthography of the considered language. In order to reduce the frequency of errors and acquire the orthographic structure in Chinese writing system， it is necessary for learners master the writing skills from learning radical units to compound characters and can also decomposing compound characters into radical units in reverse. As a Chinese teacher， how can we raise students orthographic awareness is a thought-provoking question.

In addition， Chinese characters are composed of stokes， such as horizontal stoke， vertical stroke and left-falling stroke （Heisig， J. W.， & Richardson， T. W. 2008： 3）. These strokes may be written either from left to right like“一”， or from top to bottom like“丨”， or even to the gradient direction like“丿”and some strokes even change direction in writing. Therefore， the complicated writing rules of Chinese characters will inevitably bring difficulties for foreign learners to memorize and write Chinese characters.

On the other hand， when it comes to the pronunciation， Chinese language has a total of more than 1，300 syllables and around 50，000，000 Chinese characters （Woo， J. Y. T. 2004： 182）. Even the commonly used Chinese characters are 7，000. Consequently， it exists so many homophonic characters. Besides， the biggest characteristics and difficulties of Chinese phonetic is that the Chinese language has four tones， which contributes to a lot more pronunciation similar characters.

Finally， learners lack the awareness of orthography， they tend to “draw” characters rather than “write”， especially the beginner， by which I mean that many learners view Chinese characters only as patterns made up of scattered strokes， rather than as a tightly structured whole with logically arranged strokes and radicals. Besides， from my observation in class， when students write Chinese characters， they often tinker with their strokes for several times， for example， when they write "那"，often the fourth stroke “丿” is written linking with the first three strokes， namely  “     ” and then the student will add a little bit to the left of the second and third strokes to make the horizontal stroke appears to intersect with the fourth stroke.

2.2.2 The problems existing in Chinese character teaching

Generally speaking， the main problems exposed in the teaching of Chinese characters are as follows. Firstly， teaching materials for Chinese character need to be updated. There are two main teaching materials for Chinese character teaching： one is the section of Chinese characters attached to the text， and the other is the special Chinese characters textbook. The former kind of textbooks ignore the importance of Chinese characters and regard the teaching of Chinese characters as an adjunct to learning vocabulary and grammar. The latter kind of textbooks ignore the relationship between Chinese teaching and text， thus isolate the explanation of Chinese characters.

Secondly， the teaching methods of Chinese characters in class need to be improved. In Chinese teaching， the teaching of Chinese characters is often ignored. Teachers often only ask students to recognize Chinese characters and read out the pronunciation. But in fact， only being able to recognize Chinese characters and read the pronunciation cannot meet the needs of students' daily communication， nor can they read articles smoothly to obtain information.

Last but not least， students have negative psychology on Chinese character learning. There are so many foreign students who neglect to learn Chinese characters because they do not understand the importance of learning Chinese characters and they are even afraid of learning Chinese characters. In their eyes， Chinese characters are irregular and mysterious patterns with many strokes and complicated structures， which are difficult to write and remember. What makes them even more troublesome is the pronunciation of Chinese characters. It is difficult to understand the relationship between the shape， sound and meaning of Chinese characters. Moreover， there are no tonal marks on Chinese characters， so they can only pronounce the sounds by memory， which is even more difficult.

3 The survey

The respondents in my surveys are 19 Asian learners from Japan， Thailand， Vietnamese， Tajikistan， Uzbekistan， Kyrghyzstan， Kazakhstan and one African learner from Cameroon. All of them are first-year international students majoring in Chinese at the Minzu University of China and they are intermediate level or above Chinese language learners who already pass HSK 5.

One survey is designed to present the statistics of the frequency of the different type of errors made by respondents. Though analysing 116 pieces of 200-300 words essay wrote by them in exams or after class， I initially divided the errors of Chinese characters written by foreign students into the following different types according to the order of stroke， radical and character.

Another survey aims to help Chinese language teacher understand the difficulties and needs of foreign leaners. The survey was divided into three parts： in the first part， they were asked to select the difficulties and challenges they face in the beginning stage of learning Chinese characters. in the second part， the strategies they use during their Chinese characters learning process to pull through were collected. In the last part， I collected the teaching suggestions given by the students. All the questions in the questionnaire were objective multiple-choice questions so that the results can be quantified.

3.1 Results

Survey 1

This survey analyzed the errors of various types of Chinese characters in the essays written by students in homework and exams and counted the frequency of each type.

3   Discussion

According to table 1， Confuse two Chinese characters that sound alike is the most common type of errors for students， accounting for 20.3%. The share of character errors is around 38.8% of all errors. The proportion of component errors and stroke errors is 37.9% and 23.3% respectively. It can be seen that for intermediate-level Chinese learners， although they have initially established the concept of Chinese characters as a whole and the sense of orthography， there are still many problems in strokes and radicals when they write Chinese characters.

As can be seen from table 2， students have more difficulty in reading than writing characters. The biggest challenge is not being able to remember the pronunciation of characters， followed by polyphonic characters， occupied 90% and 60% respectively. Students from alphabetic language systems also say that not being able to remember the pronunciation of characters affects their ability to look them up in the dictionary because they are used to phonetic retrieval. When it comes to writing Chinese characters， the problem of writing order is more prominent， which shows that writing order teaching has not achieved the expectation. In addition， Chinese characters with a similar shape are not easy for them to distribute.

The statistics in table 3 shows that few people use their mother tongue to remember the pronunciation of Chinese characters， indicating that foreign learners can notice that the phonetic system of Chinese is not completely corresponding to that of their mother tongue， so they do not use this method. Moreover， speculate the meaning of the Chinese character according to the semantic part of it occupied the highest proportion so that it is of great importance to help international students grasp the meaning of words. The selection rate of remembering the pronunciation of the Chinese character according to the phonetic part of it is not low， which indicates that foreign learners have paid attention to some common phonetic components and can predict the pronunciation of Chinese characters according to their previous phonetic knowledge.

Table 4 shows data concerning the teaching strategies given by learners. Most students prefer the teaching sequence from the whole characters to the radicals， so as to gain a specific understanding of the radicals. Besides， most students require the teaching of Chinese characters to cooperate with the teaching of Chinese language， namely， the content of listening， speaking， reading and writing should be as consistent as possible， because the ability of language and writing is an organic whole and should not be separated.

4Concluding remarks with reference to TCSOL

Based on the investigation and analysis of Chinese character writing errors of intermediate-level Chinese learners， we find that the prominent type of Chinese character writing errors of these students is the misuse of similar phonetic characters and similar morphological characters. In view of this feature， I propose the following suggestions.

To begin with， teachers can lead learners to sort out and summarize the Chinese characters with the same semantic or phonetic compounds in class. Since more than 80% of Chinese characters have the structure “semantic component + phonetic component”， it is necessary for teachers to take actions to enable students to use semantic or phonetic compounds to analysis and memorize Chinese characters （Xing， J. Z. 2006： 170）. Teachers can follow the teaching order from the whole characters to radicals to strokes and consciously guide students to analysis whether the character is semantic or phonetic compounds or not when facing a new Chinese character. If it is， then ask them what is the semantic and phonetic part of the character， what other characters have this semantic or phonetic part and what does it mean？

In addition， as for those students who have difficulties in memorizing characters， the following teaching strategies may enable them to learn efficiently. The first strategy is telling an interesting story of character， for example： when you teach 葉yè ‘leaf to students， you can tell the traditional Chinese medicine is known for taking a leaf or herd and turning it into effective medicine. Now there are no less than 10 different types of leaves blending with herbs will stuff into your mouth and if you look at the character carefully， you will find the 10 leaves are too much for your smallmouth to eat.  Besides， if your students are kids， we can personalize the Chinese character， guide the child to see the character as a person， a part of a stroke can be seen as a person's limbs so that Chinese characters also have head， shoulders， legs， eyes， ears， mouth， nose， clothing， hats， shoes and even socks. For example， "丶" of the character 立lì‘standis just like a head of a person， the "一" of it is like the shoulder， the "   " in the middle like hands and feet， the "一" below like the ground. Therefore， the character“立” just like a person stands on the ground. It is worth noting that the story used in this strategy may have no relations with the history or culture of the characters. However， they are still good stories as long as it can help students to memorize the character. The second strategy is the guessing method， which is effective for students to memorize compound characters with phonetic and semantic parts， for example：