Configuration And Cognitive

Design research is a process which consists of segments like questions location, adequate and deep investigation, concept obtaining, and integration of resources and so on. It is also a system that can produce design results. With the help of academic achievements from the field of study on the structure of Chinese characters, the cognition of Chinese characters, and overseas Chinese teaching, this research focused on the practical problems foreigners (from countries using Latin or Slavonic alphabets) who were interested in or had just begun learning Chinese characters may have, such as lack of classroom learning, Chinese teachers, or even pronunciation listening conditions. Base on the deep understanding of the features of Chinese characters and the resistance foreigners commonly experienced in the Chinese characters acquisition activities, by using design methods, the author tried to explore a more convenient and effective way for foreigners to learn Chinese through visual resources, and then summed up some design principles.This research combines theories study and design practice, and these methods are closely related to the nature of this kind of design research. No matter at any stage, documents research and experiments are the most important methods. In dealing with theoretical problems, compare, observing, analyzing and inductive methods are combined. In the process of experiments, hypothesis, sampling, interviewing methods are combined.This research broke the path dependence in general overseas Chinese teaching, and tried to introduce new possibilities to the Chinese characters spreading activities. The author relocated the key problem, and pointed out that one of the most common purposes why foreigners learn Chinese characters is to understand Chinese culture, And then expounded "the unique value and function Chinese characters have on foreign acquisition of them" from two aspects. After that, in the position of design study, the author presumed new ways to solve the problem by conversing viewing angle. Chapter Three analyzed foreigners'view and cognition habits of characters, and revealed the culture background and potential factors of resistances come from Chinese characters'structure in the foreign acquisition activities. On the basis of linguistics and the study of writing, the author chose12written paragraphs of different languages and compared them with Chinese, then tried to describe the feature of Chinese characters written form. With the help of Chinese characters cognition psychology, the author found out how those features had influence on foreign cognition process, and whether the resistance could be relieved through design.During the three years' research, the author summed up some design principles which could relieve the excessive resistances come from Chinese characters in the course of foreign acquisition. One is to show the motivation lies in pictographic factors in shaping process; the other one is to reveal the regularity of compound characters (especially pictophonetic characters). On the first point, design experiments and effect analyzing focused on the features of Chinese characters and the corresponding image scenes; On the second point, design experiments and effect analyzing focused on how to strengthen consciousness of the components and components'locations. In the end, according to four standards, the author decided the scope that example characters should be chosen from and the parameters to describe their usage.Chapter Five showed the documents prepared for the design of "employing its original pictographic factors" and "developing'new pictographic factors'", including example Chinese characters with related information and diachronic evolution sequences with their illustration. With the necessary analysis and illustration, the author also displayed some of the design samples to show the practicability and feasibility of these design principles. In Chapter Six, the author centralized the discussion about "the components of compound characters" onto "the components of pictophonetic characters", and then focused the scope of "components" on the "radicals". Then the author employed the pictographic factors again to help understanding and remembering the radicals. The documents prepared for the design experiments and some of the design samples were included in Chapter Six. In Chapter Seven, the author summed up design principles which had not been written about but had been found during the over two years' study.At last, Chapter Eight summed up and refined all the design principles, and made a brief comment on the significance of this research.