Does Pinyin spelling matter in self-teaching in Chinese as a foreign language?

Abstract

To date, the utility of Pinyin in teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) is still under debate. This study sought to enhance the understanding of Pinyin's role in CFL self-teaching by investigating the association of Pinyin spelling with word meaning inference among non-alphabetic L1 CFL learners. Fifty-four Japanese-speaking university first-year CFL learners completed one test consisting of five paper-and-pencil tasks, including Pinyin spelling, phonetic radical knowledge, semantic radical knowledge, single-character word meaning inferencing, and contextualized multi-character word meaning inferencing. Correlation and regression analyses yielded three major findings: (1) Pinyin spelling was significantly related to single-character word meaning inferencing, over and above phonetic and semantic radical knowledge. (2) Semantic radical knowledge was directly related to contextualized multi-character word inferencing. (3) Pinyin spelling was indirectly related to contextualized multi-character word inferencing via single-character word meaning inferencing. The results suggested that Pinyin spelling does matter in CFL self-teaching, even for non-alphabetic CFL learners. 拼音在中文作爲外語的教學和學習中是否產生作用，目前學界仍存在著爭議。 本研究試圖研究拼音拼寫與母語為非拼音文字的中文學習者，詞義推斷之間的關聯。54名日語為母語的大學一年級中文學習者完成了一次測試，包括五項任務，分別是拼音拼寫，聲旁知識，部首知識，單字詞義推斷，和情境化多字詞義推斷。 根據相關性和迴歸分析的結果，本研究有三個主要發現：（1）拼音拼寫與單字詞義推斷準確度顯著相關，且超過了與聲旁和部首知識的關聯性。（2）部首知識與情境化多字詞義推斷準確度是直接相關。（3）拼音拼寫通過單字詞義推斷，間接影響情境化多字詞義推斷準確度。 結果表明，對於母語為非拼音文字的中文外語學習者而言，拼音拼寫在他們的自我教學過程中產生重要的作用。