Springer Texts in Education Clay Williams Teaching English Reading in the Chinese-Speaking World Building Strategies Across Scripts Springer Texts in Education More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13812 Clay Williams Teaching English Reading in the Chinese-Speaking World Building Strategies Across Scripts 123 ClayWilliams AkitaInternational University Akita Japan ISSN 2366-7672 ISSN 2366-7980 (electronic) SpringerTexts inEducation ISBN978-981-10-0641-8 ISBN978-981-10-0643-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0643-2 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016935398 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaSingapore2016 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontainedhereinor foranyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade. Printedonacid-freepaper ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerScience+BusinessMediaSingaporePteLtd. To my lovely wife, Bonnie, and my kids. Coming home to you is what makes all the hard work worthwhile. Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation to my employer, Akita International University,fortheirsupportandencouragementofthisproject.Iwouldliketooffer special thanks to Dr. Rachael Ruegg and the other members of English for Aca- demic Purposesdepartment who took the time and effort toproofread thechapters of this manuscript, and who made so many worthwhile suggestions which were incorporated into the final version. I am in your debt! I would also like to thank the University of Arizona, and especially Dr. Tom Bever,whosetmeoutonthisresearchpathsomanyyearsago.Ittookalongtime togettothispoint,butultimately,thefirststepsonthisjourneyonlyhappenedasa result of your ideas and encouragement. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those at Springer Science +BusinessMediaforpatientlyshepherdingmethroughthisprocess.Specialthanks to Mr. Lawrence Liu for taking a chance on a young academic! Additionally, I would like to thank all the reviewers, whose names I don’t know, but whose suggestions were invaluable to making this manuscript what it is today. Finally, I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my family—most especially my wife—for patiently bearing with me during the many, many hours spent away researching and writing. I love you! vii Contents 1 Introductions to Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 How Does Literacy Affect L2 Learning?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Reading and Vocabulary Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 How Do We Recognize Individual Words?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.4 The Problem… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.5 A Few More Comments… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.5.1 Wait, Though! Doesn’t L1 Literacy Necessarily Improve L2 Literacy Development? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.5.2 If This Isn’t a Widespread Problem, Why Do We Care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1.5.3 Aren’t There Quite a Few Other Problems that Could Be Causing Students to Get Frustrated and to Abandon English Study? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.6 Chapter Descriptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2 The Chinese Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1 Which “Chinese” Are We Talking About? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2 The Rise of Mandarin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.3 Tōnes, Tónes, Tǒnes, and Tònes…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.4 Other Notes on Chinese: Grammar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.5 The Character System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2.5.1 Myths and Misconceptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3 Chinese Elementary Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.1 Child Learning Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 3.2 How Chinese Is Taught in Elementary Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.3 Language-Specific Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.4 Research on Chinese Child Literacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.5 The Relationship Between Teaching and Reading Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 ix x Contents 4 English Education in the Chinese Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.1 The History of English in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.2 English Education in Other Chinese-Speaking Areas. . . . . . . . . 64 4.3 Western Foreign Language Pedagogical Trends: Communicative Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4.4 Foreign Language Pedagogical Trends in Chinese L1 Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.5 How Do Asian Students Learn?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 4.6 Differences in Information Procession. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.7 Recent Innovations in Chinese EFL Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.8 The Role of Cram Schools in English Education . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.9 The Story Continues…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 5 Chinese on the Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 5.1 Basic Word Decoding Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 5.2 Word Processing and Dyslexia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.3 Dyslexia in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 5.4 Neurological Differences in Chinese Dyslexics. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.5 The Effect of Script on Reading Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.6 Semantic Versus Phonological Decoding in Chinese Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.7 Priming Studies: Evidence of Dual Routes to Character Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 5.8 Other Studies on Radical Use in Character Decoding . . . . . . . . 97 5.9 Chinese “Words”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 5.10 On-Line Processing in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 5.11 Cerebral Asymmetries in Chinese Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 5.12 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 6 Default Reading Strategies: English and Chinese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.1 Reading Models: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.2 Goodman’s Model of Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 6.3 Rummelhart’s Interactive Reading Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 6.4 LaBerge and Samuels: Automatic Information Processing . . . . . 110 6.5 Stanovich: Interactive Compensatory Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6.6 Applicability to Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6.7 Default Character Processing Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 6.8 Processing in Alphabetic Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.9 Default Processing in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 6.10 The Question. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 6.11 Experiment 1: Semantic Categorization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 6.12 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 6.13 Experiment #2: Homonym Recognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Contents xi 6.14 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 6.15 Experiment #3: Blurred Lexical Decision Task. . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 6.16 Materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 6.17 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 6.18 What It All Means …. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 6.19 Chinese L2 Instructional Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 6.20 Teaching Radical Awareness in Chinese Literacy Pedagogy. . . . 130 6.21 Character Processing Strategy Use by Chinese as a Foreign Language Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 6.22 Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 6.23 Experiment 2.1: Semantic Categorization Task. . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 6.24 Experiment 2.2: Homonym Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 6.25 Experiment 2.3: Blurred Lexical Decision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 6.26 Resolving Experiments #2 and #3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 7 Reading Against the Stream: Using the Wrong Strategies to Acquire L2 Literacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 7.1 Conflicting L1 and L2 Reading Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 7.2 A Case Study of Low English Literacy Proficiency in Taiwanese University Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 7.2.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 7.3 The Intervention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 7.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 7.5 General Implications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 7.6 Evidence of L1 Interference in L2 Reading Strategies. . . . . . . . 154 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 8 A Better Way: Teaching English from the Ground Up. . . . . . . . . . 161 8.1 Principle #1: Explicit Teaching of Sound-to-Symbol Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 8.2 Principle #2: Students Should Receive Explicit Instruction on the Combinatorial Nature of Phonological Representation in English. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 8.3 Principle #3: Lessons Should Feature Regular Practice in Explicit Use of Phonological Decoding Strategies. . . . . . . . . 168 8.4 Principle #4: Teachers Should Seek to Explicitly Delink and Distinguish Chinese and English Phonology . . . . . . . . . . . 171 8.5 Beyond the Phonological. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 8.6 Practicing Orthographic Decoding Skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 8.7 Practicing Semantic Decoding Skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176