The Role of Technology in Teaching and Learning Chinese Characters

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes of those difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound characters include the phonetic component radicals that do not always sound the same as the phonetic radicals. These unique linguistic features of the Chinese language add even more challenges for learning of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Technology integration has been found to facilitate the teaching and learning foreign languages in many efficient and effective ways. To overcome the difficulties of learning CFL, the authors of this paper present a technology enhanced character teaching model consisting of four stages—radical awareness, enforcement of sound-meaning connections of characters, enforcement of sound-meaning-form connections of characters, and evaluation (REEE). This model was found to be effective in saving class time for interaction and in engaging students in the learning process. The authors suggest future studies are needed to further investigate the effectiveness of the REEE model of teaching and learning Chinese characters.