Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

XIAO 231b. Teach the students to write each of the sub-component and then assemble them together by following theconfiguration rules. In this way, the writing of the high-density characters becomes a fun block-buildinggame.c. Some of my students prepare their own flashcards. I ask them to color-code the components, because thevisual images of the parts can help them reduce the memory load and help them memorize the charactereasily.(ii) Using explicit orthographic knowledge for explanation 39 (36.79%)a. To prevent errors at the stroke level, we need to help students develop explicit concept/knowledge of strokessuch as dian, heng, shu, pie, na, wan, henggou, shugou, xiegou, hengzhe,, shuzhe.b. Explain the semantic meaning of the radical and its relationship with the corresponding character.c. For characters which has exactly the same components and finals, we need to explicitly explain theirconfigurations.d. Explain the origin of the character and show the evolution.(iii) Effectively providing new information 14 (13.20%)a. 1 would try to space out graphically/phonetically/semantically similar characters in order to avoid confusion.b. When I introduce a new character, I use a color-coded flashcard with the radical being coded with red andthe phonetic with a different color to make them aware that this character consists of two components.c. When teaching yu “rain,” I draw a picture of rain dropping and tell the students that the four dots are raindrops.d. I often try to make stories, so the students can remember the character more easily. For example, ting“listen:” listen to the king, the ear of the king, ten for one heart.e. When we introduce a new character, we should contextulize it so that the students can remember itsmeaning.(iv) Reinforcing information with practice, comparison, or contrast 13 (12.27%)a. It is important to group the graphically similar characters together and then compare and contrast them.b. I will compare the graphically similar forms, point out their differences, and make semantic connections.c. To prevent such errors, comparisons must be done to show the graphic difference between the components.d. Emphasizing and reinforcing new information to the students help them with understanding and memory.Total 106 (100%)As shown in Table 4, out of the 106 responses for preventive strategies, there are 40(37.74%) in favor of raising learners’ orthographic awareness, 39 (36.79%) in favor ofusing explicit orthographic knowledge for explanation, 14 (13.20%) in favor ofeffectively providing new information, and 13 (12.27%) in favor of reinforcinginformation with practice, comparison, or contrast. The participants seem to put muchmore weight on raising orthographic awareness and using KAL than providing andreinforcing information.Results of Class ObservationsIn the participants’ classroom teaching, the time spent on character writing ranged from15 to 25 minutes in a lesson period (50 minutes each), depending on the objectives andtime allocation of a particular class. Nonetheless, this component was seen to be carriedout in five types of activities: warm-up, introduction of new characters, communicativeactivities, review of learned characters, and evaluation of homework or review quizzes.The introduction of the new characters of a lesson was, as designated in the course