Alphabetic Readers Quickly Acquire Orthographic Structure in Learning to Read Chinese

This study aimed to explore how alphabetic readers learn to read Chinese. First-year Chinese beginning learners who are skilled English readers were tested for their sensitivity to the visual-orthographic structures of Chinese characters. The study also explored the effect of the frequency of the characters in their curriculum on performance of a lexical decision and naming task. The students' linguistic knowledge about the characters was also tested. Results showed that the beginning learners were sensitive to the structural complexity of characters, they accepted simple characters more quickly and more accurately than compound characters, and they responded faster and more accurately to high-frequency than to low-frequency characters. Sensitivity to the structural composition of the character was also revealed: The learners rejected noncharacters containing illegal radical forms faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in illegal positions, which in turn were rejected faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in legal positions. A significant frequency effect was also found in the naming task, though the effect of structural complexity was not significant. These results suggest that perceptual learning plays an important role in early nonalphabetic learning by alphabetic readers. Both cross-writing system differences and second-language status may have an impact on such learning.