THE EFFECTS OF SINGLE AND DUAL CODED MULTIMEDIA INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS ON CHINESE CHARACTER LEARNING

Abstract

Learning Chinese characters is a difficult task for adult English native speakers due to the significant differences between the Chinese and English writing system. The visuospatial properties of Chinese characters have inspired the development of instructional methods using both verbal and visual information based on the Dual Coding Theory. This study investigated the effects of single (verbal or visual) and dual (verbal and visual) coded instructional methods on learning both concrete and abstract Chinese characters using computer-based multimedia while the spatial ability of the learners was statistically controlled. One hundred twenty adults with no prior knowledge of Chinese were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: a text-only method group, an animation-only method group, an animation-plus-text method group, an animation-plus-narration method group. All participants learned the same 24 Chinese characters, of which 12 were pictographs representing concrete objects and 12 were ideographs representing abstract concepts. Statistical analyses revealed a significant difference between the single coded and the dual coded instructional methods. The dual coded methods worked better than the single coded methods. Participants performed better on concrete characters than on abstract characters. In addition, under the single coded method, the animation-only method led to better achievement than the text-only method. In contrast, under the dual coded method, the animation-plus-narration method was superior to the animation-plus-text method. These results suggest that dual coded instructional methods involving computer animations with multi-sensory input have a significant positive influence on Chinese character learning. The study also discusses implications in the areas of not only foreign language instruction of Chinese characters including both integrals and compounds, but also native language acquisition by Chinese dyslexics as well as alphabetic language speakers.