The semantic analysis method for teaching Chinese characters

The semantic analysis method used in this dissertation was designed for teaching the meaning and the written form of Chinese characters. Emphasizing the semantic-graphic feature of Chinese characters, this method teaches the meaning of a character through its written form. Taking advantage of the "picture" feature of logographic symbols, this method builds two links, the imagery link and the logical link. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine whether this mnemonic instructional approach was educationally useful compared to the rote learning approach through a direct investigation of the effects of Chinese character teaching in classroom settings.; Three independent studies were conducted involving 140 students. Subjects in Study 1 were two high school classes. Subjects in Study 2 and 3 were seven elementary school classes. Materials were 25 characters on the topic of weather and time, taught over a 4-day teaching period in 15-20 minute lessons. Experimental (mnemonic instruction) and control (rote-learning) groups were taught the same characters within the same amount of time.; Two hypotheses, the initial learning hypothesis and the long-term memory hypothesis, were tested. It was expected that the semantic analysis method would yield better results than the rote learning condition with regard to initial learning and long-term memory on the two major tasks of character learning--learning the meaning of a character and learning its written form. Students' performance on four quizzes and a transfer test were used to evaluate the initial learning effects. Three posttests were used to evaluate the long-term memory effects.; Results strongly supported the two original hypotheses. Results from t tests, the individual effect sizes, and overall average effect sizes calculated from standard deviations showed strong evidence that the semantic analysis method yielded better results than the rote learning condition with regard to the initial learning of the Chinese characters on both recognition and production, at both high school and elementary school levels. Data also showed strong evidence that this method increased long-term memory in learning characters relative to the rote learning procedures on the same two learning tasks, but only at the elementary school level.