Utilizing Clues Of Phonetic And Semantic Radicals In Pucto-Phonetic Characters: A Developmental Study Of Indonesian Students

This article investigated the processes of acquisition of phonetic and semantic radicals of Chinese characters by learner of Mandarin whose native language is Indonesian.The present study consisted of two parts:Using an identity judgment task, Experiment 1 investigated into three-level Indonesian students' pronunciation of phonogram characters with different familiarities. Even for low-level students, regular effect plays a more and more important role when student's Chinese level improves. Low-level and middle-level students used the phonological clues of characters more frequently when pronouncing unfamiliar characters; high-level students used the phonological cues of characters pronouncing familiar characters as well as pronouncing unfamiliar characters.Using a semantic categorization task, Experiment 2 investigated into three-level Indonesian students' lexical access of ideogram characters with different familiarities. The results showed that semantic clues play a more and more important role in unfamiliar characters' lexical access when student's Chinese level improves. But only high-level students performed significantly better on characters with clear indication of semantic radical than on unclear ones. And they only use semantic clues in unfamiliar characters' lexical access.In a word, Indonesian students start to use phonetic clues early and in both pronunciation of familiar and unfamiliar characters; they start to use semantic clues late and only in lexical access of unfamiliar characters. We should use different methods in teaching pucto-phonetic character according to cognitive characteristics of different-level Indonesian students.