The role of radical-with-dual-coding, copying, and phonological approaches for NCS young learners in Chinese characters acquisition and memory retention

How do non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) young learners acquire Chinese characters most effectively under brief instruction? This preliminary study compared three approaches—radical-with-dual-coding mnemonics, copying, and phonological instruction, on character acquisition and retention among NCS young learners in Hong Kong. The copying approach emphasized stroke order, directionality, and structure through motor practice. The phonological approach focused on sound-form correspondence using phonetic cues. The radical-with-dual-coding approach paired characters with simple visual pictographs and concise English prompts to support form-meaning learning. Using a counterbalanced within-subjects design, 95 participants comprising 39 preschoolers (K2-3, aged 5–6) and 56 primary students (P1-2, aged 7–8) learned 21 characters assumed to be unfamiliar, with 7 characters taught under each approach. On the immediate test, the radical-with-dual-coding approach showed the highest mean performance overall and significantly outperformed the copying approach, although its pairwise difference from the phonological approach was not significant. This overall advantage, relative to the average of the other two approaches, persisted on a delayed test administered about 9.5 days later, while forgetting rates were comparable across approaches. The findings were similar across the two learner groups. However, an exploratory character-type analysis showed that the advantage of radical-with-dual-coding approach was confined to single-component characters, with no significant between-approach differences emerging for compound characters. Thus, the data indicate a small benefit of concise verbal-visual mnemonic support for initial character learning, but do not support the stronger claim that the effect was driven specifically by radical awareness.