Published: 2024-03-29

Graphemic Awareness Development of Polish Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language

Zuzanna Wnuk Logo ORCID

Abstract

Metalinguistic orthographic awareness plays a crucial role in the development of Chinese language proficiency: writing, reading, and learning new words. However, few studies have explored the topic using qualitative methods. The aim of this work is to explore how the perception of Chinese characters of Chinese foreign language learners changes along with their proficiency. The responses were collected from 43 Polish university students of Chinese with the use of a graphemic awareness test during which participants were to decide on correctness of presented pseudo-characters. The results of this study show that beginners focus first and foremost on correctness of the strokes, the intermediate learners’ attention shifts to character elements and their correct position, and the advanced learners analyze the characters taking into consideration both character elements and structure of characters. It is suggested that the overall rapid development of graphemic awareness in the study group might be due to the explicit instruction. The conclusion can be drawn that the described shift in learners’ perception is a result of them learning to direct their attention towards the critical orthographic aspects of the characters.

Download files

Citation rules

Wnuk, Z. (2024). Graphemic Awareness Development of Polish Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 10(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.31261/TAPSLA.14693

Cited by / Share

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2024)
Published: 2024-04-19


ISSN: 2450-5455
eISSN: 2451-2125
Ikona DOI 10.31261/tapsla

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.