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Chinatowns, as neighborhoods for overseas ethnic Chinese, have garnered considerable scholarly attention from linguistic landscape (LL) researchers in recent years. These investigations tend to treat old immigrants who have been tied to the neighborhoods for generations as the key text producers of LL, with far too little attention paid to the LL practices of new Chinese immigrants in Chinatowns, who are often associated with transnationalism and the rise of China. Focusing on Singapore's Chinatown, the present study attempts to explore Chinese Singaporean and new Chinese immigrants' linguistic choices concerning the Chinese-language signs displayed in the LL. Drawing on 326 instances of signs collected during site visits, the study found that Chinese Singaporeans and new Chinese immigrants make different linguistic choices when projecting their respective authenticities and identities. These findings suggest that there is indeed a linguistic basis for previously expressed arguments that Chinese Singaporean authenticity is threatened by new Chinese immigrants, shedding light on the need to examine the heterogeneity of Chinatown from the perspective of LL. This study enriches the scholarly understanding of LL practices within Chinese diasporic settlements in the East.

The teaching of L2 phonics, defined here as explicit instruction in the symbol-sound correspondences of a second or foreign language, has been enjoying growing popularity in recent years. This is associated with the reemphasis of phonological decoding in different aspects of L2 learning, and learners' difficulty in developing L2 decoding proficiency. However, there has been limited research on L2 phonics instruction, particularly qualitative evidence exploring the nature of learners' decoding errors. For Chinese EFL learners, past studies often stress the negative impact of their morphemic L1 on decoding English words. In contrast, the potential influence of Pinyin knowledge (an alphabetic system for transcribing the spoken Chinese language) has often been overlooked, despite constituting an important aspect of their literacy. This study reports the effects of an English phonics instruction program, conducted with Chinese university EFL learners, on different categories of English graphemes, classified according to (a) whether they are present or absent in Pinyin, and (b) if present, whether their pronunciations are similar or different across Pinyin and English. In a quasi-experimental design, a group of first-year English majors (n = 71) received 12 weeks of English phonics instruction, while a comparison group (n = 67) received 12 weeks of English phonology instruction without phonics. The results show that the phonics group made significantly more progress in decoding some graphemes, especially Pinyin-absent graphemes. Qualitative analysis of participants' decoding identifies three types of common errors in decoding, with the impact of Pinyin being highlighted. Implications for the design of L2 phonics instruction programs are drawn.

The article highlights the importance of transliteration in the field of machine translation, correct writing of personal and place names, and information retrieval. It provides an overview of various approaches, models and methods available in the field of transliteration. It shows the types of transliteration methods. The article also highlights the principles taken into account during the process of transliteration. It shows advantages and disadvantages of the proposed transliteration methods for different languages. It explains the accuracy of mentioned transliteration techniques through transliterated words. It is noted that proposed transliteration methods for one language may not be significant for others. Moreover, it may not be enough to apply only one method in the field of direct and backward transliteration of languages with different graphemes and phonemes. Therefore, different transliteration techniques have to be combined.

The romanization of non-alphabetic scripts, particularly in digital contexts, is a widespread phenomenon across many languages. However, the effect of script romanization on English reading by bilinguals with English as a second language is underexamined. Guided by the premises of the "script relativity hypothesis" and the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) model, we examined differences in phonological activation during visual English word recognition by Hindi-English bilinguals after they were primed with interlingual homophones in Devanagari (traditional Hindi script) and Romanagari (romanized Hindi script). We also explored the specific roles played by diacritic markers and individual language proficiencies. Linear mixed-effects and regression modeling showed that participants were faster at English word recognition when primed by interlingual homophones in Romanagari than in Devanagari. Further, words with diacritics led to faster English word recognition than words without diacritics with both scripts. This was unexpected since Romanagari does not mark diacritics. Finally, lexical proficiency in English and Devanagari explained variance in phonological priming effects. The findings provide evidence that adopting an additional L1 script might reconfigure the architecture of the bilingual lexicon. Our results support the view that script differences play a critical role in language processing.

Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle Ages, when it was adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim traders, it was adapted to Malay phonology using diacritics that modified six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi) brought in by European traders and colonisers began to supplant it in the nineteenth century. In spite of that, Jawi still appears in the linguistic landscape of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Pattani (Thailand). For this article snapshots have been taken of different shop signs using Jawi in Kuala Lumpur, Malacca and Kota Bharu (Malaysia). After an introduction to the structure and use of Jawi and the multilingual and 'multiscriptal' linguistic landscape in Malaysia, the significance of Jawi in the Malay Archipelago and its mainly symbolic use in the linguistic landscape are discussed. To complement the analysis, a quantitative survey carried out among a sample of Malaysian undergraduate students and a qualitative one among a small sample of teachers and lecturers in one Malaysian university on their attitudes towards the use of Jawi are also discussed. The article closes with some considerations and suggestions for the possible revival of Jawi.

Kazakhstan's decision to transition its Kazakh language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet has serious implications for language policy, communication, education, inclusion, and social cohesion. This critical qualitative study, underpinned by a discourse-historical approach, employs critical discourse analysis to analyze statements of ex-President Nursultan Nazarbayev and semi-structured interviews with Kazakh language educators and social media articles to determine the nature and effects of the Latinization of Kazakh on social cohesion, inclusion, and inclusive education. The findings indicate that Latinization of Kazakh is gradually becoming more ethnically oriented, implying that the inevitable formation of included and excluded language groups. These patterns in society might undermine social cohesion and inclusion, hinder their maintenance and hamper efforts to achieve inclusive education, which prioritizes equality for all social groups through proper access to knowledge.

The primary goal of this meta-analysis was to estimate the overall size of the relation between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and spelling in alphabetic languages and to examine what factors may moderate their relation. In addition, we examined if the size of the RAN-spelling relation is similar to that of the RAN-reading relation. A random-effects model with robust variance estimation was used to analyze 264 RAN-spelling effect sizes and 385 RAN-reading effect sizes from 103 studies. Results indicated a moderate association between RAN and spelling (r = 0.35) and between RAN and reading (r = 0.44) with a moderately high degree of heterogeneity. In addition, moderator analyses revealed both similarities and differences in the moderators of the RAN-spelling and RAN-reading relation. Whereas RAN letters and digits correlated more strongly with spelling and reading than colors and objects, RAN correlated more strongly with spelling of real words than pseudowords and more strongly with spelling in opaque orthographies than in intermediate or transparent orthographies. Our findings suggest that RAN is related to both reading and spelling partly because it contributes to the formation of print-to-sound or sound-to-print connections.

Mirror invariance or generalisation is the ability to recognise objects as being the same regardless of their spatial orientation. However, when, for example, learning to read Roman script, children need to hone these skills so that they can readily discriminate between mirror letters such as b/d or p/b. Korean Hangul makes a particularly interesting comparison as it has both lateral and vertical perceptually similar mirror letter pairs (i.e., [Korean characters omitted]). In the current study, we investigated the mirror generalisation effect in native readers of Korean Hangul. We used a similar negative priming paradigm as used by (Ahr et al., Brain and Cognition 117:1-8, 2017) with Roman script readers. In contrast to their findings, we did not find evidence of negative priming due to either lateral (e.g., [Korean characters omitted]) or vertical (e.g., [Korean characters omitted]) mirror letter primes in Korean readers. One explanation for these results is that adult readers of Korean Hangul may not experience mirror invariance to the same extent as Roman script readers due to script-specific characteristics. Thus, learning to read this distinctive script may result in readers being less sensitive to mirror reversals than Roman script readers.

Despite the recent emphasis on oral English language proficiency in the Iranian education system, the teaching of oral communication remains a challenge for secondary school English language teachers. In this article, we suggest that this, in part, relates to the continued emphasis on literacy practices. The article explores the approach taken by three Iranian junior high school English language teachers to teaching oracy during a summer school task-based intervention. Data were gathered through observations and interviews, and third generation activity theory from Engeström (1996; Engeström 2001) was used to analyse teachers' practices. Findings revealed that, while trialling aspects of task-based pedagogies, the teachers' attention to oracy increased. However, they retained a strong traditional focus on literacy teaching, which had an effect on their approach to oracy and also appeared to constrain their movement towards less-controlled spoken language. This small-scale study offers insights into approaches to oracy teaching while employing task-based pedagogies in foreign language contexts like Iran. In this context, English literacy has been the historical focus, the Roman alphabet is new for the students, and there is often limited exposure to oracy practices outside the classroom context (Sadeghi and Richards, 2015).

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the use of diacritics in the Arabic script of Malay to facilitate Arab postgraduate students of UKM to read the Malay words accurately. It is hypothesised that the Arabic script could facilitate the reading of Malay words among the Arab students because of their earlier exposure to the Arabic script in comparison to the Romanised script. Method: Twelve Arabic first language speakers participated in a reading experiment that used DMDX, a Win 32-based display system for psychological experiments, to investigate whether or not Arabic vowel diacritics can facilitate Arabic first language speakers to read Malay words accurately. A total of 100 Malay bi-syllabic words were used as stimuli in three different forms: (1) Arabic script without diacritics; (2) Arabic script with diacritics; and (3) Romanised script. The participants' responses and reaction times were recorded to analyse accuracy and speed. Findings: Arabic first language speakers were more accurate when reading words in Arabic script of Malay with diacritics and when reading Romanised script than when reading Arabic words without diacritics. Arabic speakers read Malay words faster in Arabic script without diacritics and in Romanised scripts than when reading words in Arabic script with diacritics. Significance: This study shows that the use of a more familiar script to a certain extent does facilitate language learners to produce the target language more accurately compared to using a less familiar script. Hence, educators should explore any possible means to scaffold learners in their learning process.

This paper aims at investigating the effect of Arabization of Romanic Alphabets on the development of 9th Grade English as a Foreign Language students' composition writing skills at secondary school level. This experimental study includes 25 secondary school students in their 9th Grade in which English is taught as a foreign language at Al-Husainieh Secondary School for boys. The finding of this study indicates that students usually tend to write and compose English language sentences through Romanizing Arabic letters. This may be related to different reasons such as their weakness in writing and lack of awareness about specific aspect of sentence structures and lack of vocabulary deposit, but even good students tend to use the Romanic alphabets in writing. This study recommends that students should be familiar with the meaning of English words.

The question of script was paramount in the nineteenth-century debate over Hindi and Urdu, two closely related languages that are characterised by "extreme digraphia". Rather than rehearsing the well-known story of the culturally and politically charged process of differentiation in which the two sister languages became prime markers of religious identity, this paper explores the function and visual dimension of Devanagari and the Perso-Arabic script in the field of primary education. In investigating the impact of movable type printing and lithography in educational publishing, it asks how shifts in print technology and typographic innovation intersected with language ideology. The paper traces the variety of aesthetic, technological, and social arguments advanced by colonial officials, missionaries, and Indian educators in favour of either script, while also exploring how the movement for Romanisation and the prevalence of popular writing systems such as Kaithi challenged the use of the Nagari and Urdu scripts in primary education. Against the backdrop of the complex linguistic ecology of North India, it argues that the issue of script cannot be reduced to language ideological debates. Looking beyond language antagonism and engaging writing systems through the lens of functionality, standardising technologies, and typographic change will help elucidate how their social and cultural function was constituted in educational contexts.

Computer-based writing is already a norm to a large extent in social communication for any major language around the world. From this perspective, it would be pedagogically sound for students to master the Chinese input system as early as possible. This poses some challenges to students in Singapore, most of which are learning Chinese as a second language, as inputting the non-alphabetic Chinese characters is not as direct as keyboard-based input. In this regard, an exploratory study that involved 419 students from three secondary schools was conducted. The aims of the study were three-folded, (1) To investigate if there is any differences between their performances in computer- and paper-based writing; (2) To determine the relationships between their Chinese input skills and their motivation in learning Chinese and using computers for Chinese assignments; (3) To recommend a cut-off level of pinyin input skill that students need to possess. The target students were first surveyed and then sat in two essay writing tests in the two different mediums. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed. The findings of this study will help to inform various strategies necessary to enhance students' ability to carry out computer-based writing, and provide additional ground for the adoption of Chinese input system in formal curriculum and assessments. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

The term "glocal" has been used to describe phenomena that simultaneously blend both global and local elements (see Featherstone, Lash, & Robertson, 1995, p. 101). Nowhere is this more evident than in the existence of 3arabizi, itself a blended language composed of English and Vernacular Arabic, written in Latin letters but using arithmographemes, that is, numerals as letters to represent hard-to-transliterate sounds because they do not exist in English (see Bianchi, 2012). As part of a doctoral study investigating online language choice involving Arabic and English, this paper examines the unique stylistic and topical functions of 3arabizi when compared with its linguistic forbears, that is, Arabic and English in a multilingual web forum. The findings indicate that 3arabizi is used for more informal, intimate and phatic communication than either Arabic or English, though these latter two languages or codes are not entirely formal in form and purpose either.

In order to preserve distinctive cultures, people anxiously figure out writing systems of their languages as recording tools. Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka languages are three major and the most popular dialects of Han languages spoken in Chinese society. Their writing systems are all in Han characters. Various and independent phonetic transcriptions have been thus developed to be as the mapping mechanisms between Chinese mother tongue languages and Han characters. For teaching and learning facilitation purposes, we really require a convenient phonetic transcription system between daily Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka to speed Han characters data processing applications. The Roman spelling system is a universal tool that owns the one and only one spelling rule. By studying and analyzing the Roman spelling system, we have disclosed that 4135 Romanized phonetic transcriptions can be adequately applied to handle Han characters' mappings of Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka spoken dialects. In this paper, we propose a minimal perfect hashing function to process unified 4135 Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka Romanized phonetic transcriptions to their corresponding Han characters simultaneously. The unified phonetic transcription can be used to promote Chinese mother tongue languages applications and developments. Furthermore, it can be applied as a mechanism to popularize digital learning and teaching of Chinese mother tongue languages. (Contains 3 figures and 11 tables.)

In the communicative approach, English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners use scripted and unscripted language. In practice, scripted language is typically over-utilized at the expense of unscripted language. This study explores the characteristics of scripted and unscripted language in 11 beginner-level EFL students in a Japanese junior high school. When students written work was compared with their textbook, their messages were shown to be scripted and/or unscripted vis-a-vis the textbook. This study discusses how textbooks in Japan make use of pre-communicative activities but omit communicative ones. A communicative activity that has been shown to enable students to produce unscripted writing is provided. The implication is that teachers may use the findings to plan lessons that encourage learners to use unscripted language to develop communicative competence. If unscripted language is better understood and if characteristics of beginner second language writing are better understood, then this concept can be effectively used to evaluate and modify communicative language teaching materials and activities. Six practical appendices are included that provide sample handouts and detailed activity plans. (Contains 29 references.) (KFT)

This article examines everyday classroom peer interaction among emergent multilingual high school students who are new to the United States, new to school, new to English, and new to alphabetic print literacy. Data were collected through observation and video recording within a daily 90-minute, English language and literacy block class over the course of one academic year in a public high school. All students were older adolescents (16-22 years of age) who had recently arrived from East Africa and had extremely limited or no previous formal schooling experiences. Our close analysis of classroom discourse within typical daily routines reveals how students provided feedback, recasts, and support during activities that are often considered to be noninteractive and teacher-led. Concomitantly, we demonstrate how students in some cases did not take up opportunities that were intended to generate peer interaction and to provide opportunities for negotiation of meaning and form. These findings point to the importance of critically examining peer interaction in everyday contexts and suggest the need to expand conceptions of productive activities and the characteristics of peer interaction among students who are new to basic print literacy skills and new to classroom language learning routines.

Recent studies in the acquisition of a second language (L2) phonology have revealed that orthography can influence the way in which L2 learners come to establish target-like lexical representations (Escudero et al., 2008, 2014; Escudero and Wanrooij, 2010; Showalter, 2012; Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2013). Most of these studies, however, involve language pairs relying on Roman-based scripts. In comparison, the influence of a foreign or unfamiliar written representation on L2 phonological acquisition remains understudied. The present study therefore considers the effects of three L2 scripts on the early acquisition of an Arabic consonantal contrast word-initially (e.g. /hal/-/?al/). Monolingual native speakers of English with no prior knowledge of Arabic participated in a word-learning experiment where they were instructed to learn six pairs of minimally contrastive words, each associated with a unique visual referent. Participants were assigned to one of four learning conditions: no orthography, Arabic script, Cyrillic script, and Roman/Cyrillic blended script. After an initial learning phase, participants were then tested on their phonological knowledge of these L2 minimal pairs. The results show that the degree of script unfamiliarity does not in itself seem to significantly affect the successful acquisition of this particular phonological contrast. However, the presence of certain foreign scripts in the course of phonological acquisition can yield significantly different learning outcomes in comparison to having no orthographic representation available. Specifically, the Arabic script exerted an inhibitory effect on L2 phonological acquisition, while the Cyrillic and Roman/Cyrillic blended scripts exercised differential inhibitory effects based on whether grapheme-phoneme correspondences activated first language (L1) phonological units. Besides revealing, for the first time, that foreign written input can significantly hinder learners' ability to reliably encode an L2 phonological contrast, this study also provides further evidence for the irrepressible hold of native orthographic rules on L2 phonological acquisition.

Heritage language speakers struggle in European classrooms with insufficient material provided for second language (SL) learning and assessment. Considering the amount of instruments and pertinent studies in English SL, immigrant students are better prepared than their peers in Romance language settings. This study investigates how factors such as age and home language can be used in the teaching environment to predict and examine the development outcomes of SL students in verbal reasoning and vocabulary tasks. One hundred and six Portuguese participants, SL learners, between 8 and 17 years old, were assessed in vocabulary frequency, verbal analogies and morphological extraction tasks. In alphabetic languages (Romance languages), immigrant students (in a SL learning situation) with a strong linguistic distance (a home language with a very different orthographic foundation) are expected to struggle in language learning in spite of being aware of strategies that can improve their skills. The storage and combination of morphemes can be a demanding task for individual speakers at different levels. Cognitive mapping is strongly based on linguistic features of L1 development. Results show that home language, not age, was a significant predictor of variation in student's outcomes. Speakers of alphasyllabary languages (Indo-Aryan languages as L1) were the poorest performers, the "linguistic distance" of their languages explaining the performance results.

In this article, I deal with the transition from traditional "school" forms of instruction to educational processes that are fully mediated by digital technologies. Against the background of the idea the very institution "school" is closely linked to the invention of the alphabetic writing system and to the need of initiating new generations into a literate culture, I focus on the issue of literacy training. I argue that with the digitization of education, a fundamental transition takes place regarding what it means to be literate, but also what it means to educate and to be educated. I do so by developing a "techno-somatic" approach, which means that I look at the use of concrete instructional technologies, and the bodily disciplines that are involved. I set out a double comparison in which I contrast existing, "traditional" ways of learning how to read/write with the way in which literacy training looked like before the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and with the initiation into literacy in the Chinese/Japanese language, on the other hand. I argue that these comparisons shed light on the differences between traditional and digital literacy. More precisely, I show that in each case, a different relation toward what it means to produce script is involved. As such, both forms of literacy go together with different spaces of experience and senses of being-able, and therefore with altogether different ideas of what education is all about.

Most sinograms (i.e., Chinese characters) are phonograms (phonetic compounds). A phonogram is composed of a semantic radical and a phonetic radical, with the former usually implying the meaning of the phonogram, and the latter providing cues to its pronunciation. This study focused on the sub-lexical processing of semantic radicals which are themselves free standing sinograms. Two primed naming experiments were carried out to examine whether the meanings and pronunciations of the semantic radicals embedded in phonograms were activated or not during sinogram recognition. In Experiment 1, semantically opaque phonograms were used as primes. We observed facilitatory priming effects for targets which were semantically related to the semantic radicals embedded in primes, but not to the primes themselves. These effects were present for low-frequency primes, but not for high-frequency primes. Experiment 2 used only low-frequency phonograms as primes. We observed facilitatory priming effects for targets which were homophones of the semantic radicals embedded in primes, but not of the primes themselves. These results suggest that sub-lexical semantic and phonological information of semantic radicals are activated, and that the activation processes are modulated by the lexical frequency of the host phonograms. Our study shows that sub-lexical processing of semantic radicals is similar to that of phonetic radicals, indicating no fundamental difference between sub-lexical processing of semantic and phonetic radicals, supporting the view that a radical has a unique representation irrespective of its function in the orthographic system of Taft's model.

Romanized transliteration is widely used in internet communication and global commerce, yet we know little about its behavioural and neural processing. Here, we show that Romanized text imposes a significant neurocognitive load. Readers faced greater difficulty in identifying concrete words written in Romanized transliteration (Romanagari) compared to L1 and L2. Functional neuroimaging revealed that the neural cost of processing transliterations arose from significantly greater recruitment of language (left precentral gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule) and attention networks (left mid-cingulum). Additionally, transliterated text uniquely activated attention and control areas compared to both L1 (cerebellar vermis) and L2 (pre-supplementary motor area/pre-SMA). We attribute the neural effort of reading Romanized transliteration to (i) effortful phonological retrieval from unfamiliar orthographic forms and (ii) conflicting attentional demands imposed by mapping orthographic forms of one language to phonological-semantic representations in another. Finally, significant brain-behaviour correlation suggests that the left mid-cingulum modulates cognitive-linguistic conflict. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Chinese character decision task to examine whether N400 amplitude is modulated by stimulus font. Results revealed large negative-going ERPs in an N400 time window of 300-500 ms to stimuli presented in degraded Xing Kai Ti (XKT) font compared with more intact Song Ti (ST) font regardless of whether the stimuli were real or pseudo-characters. ERPs for the pseudo-characters were more negative than for the real characters with similar timing and scalp distribution. The N400-like font effect on amplitude is interpreted as analogous to an N400 stimulus degradation effect, an extension to Holcomb (1993); the degraded perceptual cues provided by XKT supposedly account for this degradation effect. This effect is further interpreted to reflect relative difficulty, which results from orthographic processing difficulty, in retrieving the meaning of XKT stimuli compared with ST stimuli. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

The effect of spacing in relation to word segmentation was examined for four groups of non-native Chinese speakers (American, Korean, Japanese, and Thai) who were learning Chinese as second language. Chinese sentences with four types of spacing information were used: unspaced text, word-spaced text, character-spaced text, and nonword-spaced text. Also, participants' native languages were different in terms of their basic characteristics: English and Korean are spaced, whereas the other two are unspaced; Japanese is character based whereas the other three are alphabetic. Thus, we assessed whether any spacing effects were modulated by native language characteristics. Eye movement measures showed least disruption to reading for word-spaced text and longer reading times for unspaced than character-spaced text, with nonword-spaced text yielding the most disruption. These effects were uninfluenced by native language (though reading times differed between groups as a result of Chinese reading experience). Demarcation of word boundaries through spacing reduces non-native readers' uncertainty about the characters that constitute a word, thereby speeding lexical identification, and in turn, reading. More generally, the results indicate that words have psychological reality for those who are learning to read Chinese as a second language, and that segmentation of text into words is more beneficial to successful comprehension than is separating individual Chinese characters with spaces. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables, and 4 footnotes.)

This study investigated intellectual development in 4-7 years old Greek and Chinese children. They were examined on speeded performance, working memory, reasoning, and self-awareness tasks in order to investigate possible effects of learning the Chinese logographic system on possible differences in intellectual development between these ethnic groups. Speeded performance was examined with commonly familiar objects and tasks related to reading (i.e., Latin, Arabic, and Chinese characters). Chinese outperformed Greeks in (1) reading-related processing efficiency tasks but not in common objects (2) spatial but not verbal WM, (3) cognitive, and (4) the self-awareness tasks. Structural equation modeling showed that performance is organized in four systems (i.e., domain-specific problem solving, representational capacity, inference, and consciousness) integrated by g, in both ethnic groups. There were differences between the two ethnicities in the strength of relations between constructs, attributed to Chinese logographic experience. That is, the massive practice in visuo/spatial processing and memory seemed to provide an advantage in the communication between systems of the mind causing increased general cognitive fluidity, expressed in higher intellectual performance among the Chinese. (Contains 3 tables and 7 figures.)

This article provides a comparative evaluation of Chinese character reform in the People's Republic of China and Japan, with a particular focus on the latest changes announced in 2009 to the existing script policies in the two countries. The first Chinese script reform took place in 1956 and the first Japanese script reform in 1946, both for the purpose of simplifying the scripts to facilitate mass education. In the 1980s, prompted by nationalistic sentiments and economic security, both countries backtracked on their script reform policies and adopted a more conservative approach that put an end to any further simplification of the script. The conservative trend which continued into the new millennium is reflected in the two latest reforms. Both China and Japan have moved further away from phonetizing the script in their effort to address issues related to information and communication technology. (Contains 2 notes.)

Teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) is increasingly becoming a mainstream profession and an independent academic discipline. However, there is little research in CALL targeting the Chinese language to date. This research attempts to show how a CALL system can be constructed following the unique properties of the Chinese language so it can benefit the learner maximally. First, we analyze student journals to identify problematic areas for British students learning Chinese as a foreign language, which seem to spread across levels of phonology, morphology, orthography, and vocabulary in an inextricable fashion. To address this issue, we designed a hierarchical network model linking levels of sound, syllables, characters, words, and phrases together in the form of nodes and connections. Current implementation of the model is a CALL system nicknamed Linkit, which can work alongside a textbook or a corpus, offering interconnected elements of the Chinese language such as the syllable, the character, the word, and the phrase on the same screen. The purpose of the design is for students to view a Chinese character not just as a character, but to see how it relates to other homophonic characters by appreciating the underlying phonological similarities and how the character can develop into a word or a phrase. We suggest that the emphasis on this type of continuity is a key factor in designing Chinese-specific CALL programs. (Contains 10 figures and 1 table.)

This monograph discusses South Korea's language situation in a language policy and planning context. This monograph consists of four parts. Part 1 presents a genetic, typological and sociolinguistic description of South Korea's national language, and an overview of minority languages, including English as well as other languages, recently transported into the country by migrant workers and foreign brides. Also included is information on the native writing system called "Hankul". Part 2 focuses on language spread and maintenance through the national education system and other means. Part 3 concerns the major issues in South Korea's language planning and policy, including orthographic reforms, lexical purification, the use and teaching of Chinese characters, digitization of Korean, and "linguistic reunification" of North and South Korea. The final part of the monograph explores future prospects of South Korea's language policy, some of the major issues being the "linguistic reunification" of North and South Korea, the status and role of English and Chinese, and emergent multilingualism. The monograph also contains some thoughts on how language planning and policy might need to develop in the future, especially with respect to issues that do not directly concern the national language, e.g. emergent multilingualism. (Contains 34 notes, 2 figures and 12 tables.)

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children's word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as an aid to reading Chinese characters) with help from their mothers. The videotapes were later coded on a scale (adapted from Aram & Levin, 2001) of mothers' writing facilitation techniques. Scores on this scale of maternal mediation of Pinyin uniquely explained children's reading of Chinese words, but not writing of Chinese words, after statistically controlling for maternal education and age, and children's non-verbal IQ, age, and phonological awareness. At time 2, 22 of the children from time 1 were further tested on Chinese word reading and word reading task 1 year later. After controlling for children's age and non-verbal IQ, maternal Pinyin mediation uniquely explained 6% of the variance in children's word writing and 7% of the variance in children's word reading performance at time 2. Results underscore the potential importance of the maternal scaffolding role for reading acquisition both theoretically and practically in a domain not previously explored (i.e., use of a common coding system (Pinyin) for learning to read, rather than word reading itself).

This article reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of pinyin (a phonic transcription system) in learning vocabulary of Chinese as a second language from the perspective of cognitive load theory. In the reported experiment, the learning effects of the vertical and horizontal layouts of characters, pinyin, and English translations were compared. Results indicated a significant advantage of the vertical format that was attributed to the elimination of split attention. It is suggested that the commonly used horizontal layout format for presenting pinyin may impose high levels of cognitive load and hinder the learning of characters at the beginner level.

Previous literature in alphabetic languages suggests that the occipital-temporal region (the ventral pathway) is specialized for automatic parallel word recognition, whereas the parietal region (the dorsal pathway) is specialized for serial letter-by-letter reading (and). However, few studies have directly examined the role of the ventral and dorsal pathways in Chinese reading compared to English reading. To investigate this issue, we adopted the degraded word processing paradigm used by Cohen et al. (2008) and compared brain regions involved in the processing of degraded Chinese characters and English words during lexical decision, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The degraded characters/words were created by inserting blank spaces between radicals of Chinese characters or syllables of English polysyllabic words. Generally, the current study replicated the effects of Cohen et al. (2008), showing that in Chinese--like in alphabetic languages--character spacing modulates both ventral (bilateral cuneus, left middle occipital gyrus) and dorsal (left superior parietal lobule and middle frontal gyrus) pathways. In addition, the current study showed greater activation in bilateral cuneus and right lingual gyrus for Chinese versus English when comparing spaced to normal stimuli, suggesting that Chinese character recognition relies more on ventral visual-spatial processing than English word recognition. Interestingly, bilateral cuneus showed monotonic patterns in response to increasing spacing, while the rest of the regions of interest showed non-monotonic patterns, indicating different profiles for these regions in visual-spatial processing. (Contains 2 tables and 6 figures.)

This study investigated the effectiveness of the integrative perceptual approach (IPA) to enhancing Hong Kong kindergarten children's Chinese character learning. The study applied the IPA to an experimental group of 29 lower form (K2) children. A group of 30 upper form children taught via traditional methods the year before, served as the control group. Quantitative data consisted of pre- and post-test scores, analysed using dependent and independent t-testing. It was found that the pupils in the experimental group had significantly improved their ability between pre- and post-testing in three aspects of Chinese character mastery: shape, sound and meaning recognition. The progress made was significantly superior to that made by control group counterparts. Qualitative data gathered through teacher and parent interviews indicated that the pupils in the experimental group displayed increased awareness of the composition of several components and structures of Chinese characters. (Contains 1 note, 3 tables, and 1 figure.)

This survey study, which involved 108 language learners enrolled in first-year Chinese as a foreign language classrooms in the United States, intended to address the research questions, "What types of Chinese-character learning strategies do US learners use?" and "Do US learners' Chinese-character learning strategy use differ based on the following learner differences: (1) Gender, (2) Home background, and (3) Previous foreign language learning experiences?" Factor analysis and MANOVA tests were run using the participants' responses in the Character Learning Strategy Inventory and the background surveys. The results of factor analysis illustrated that the participants used six types of strategies: practicing naturalistically, associating, paying attention to the characters, using mechanical techniques, grouping, and paying attention to the pronunciation. The MANOVA test results found significant interactive effect between gender and home background on strategies of using mechanical techniques. Another interactive effect was found among gender, home background, and previous foreign language learning experiences on strategies of paying attention to the characters. (Contains 5 tables.)

This paper examines how transliteration can be used as a bridge to learning for children who are studying more than one script. The focus is on second and third generation British Bangladeshi children aged 7-11, attending London primary schools and learning to write in Bengali at community-run after-school classes. An action research project explored how Bengali could be used as well as English to enhance learning at mainstream schools. Transliteration of Bengali into Roman script was found to aid this process in the following ways: as a communicative bridge between children, parents and teachers; as a conceptual bridge, promoting reflection on meanings and metalinguistic awareness; as a bridge to the Bengali script itself, mediating between oral and written representation; and as a bridge to new learner identities, enabling expression of ideas and building children's confidence as bilingual writers.

The left mid-fusiform gyrus is repeatedly reported to be involved in visual word processing. Nevertheless, it is controversial whether this area responds to orthographic processing of reading. To examine this idea, neural activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in the present study while subjects performed phonological, semantic, and orthographic tasks with Chinese characters under equivalent task difficulties. One region in the left mid-fusiform gyrus exhibited greater activity during the orthographic task than during the phonological and semantic tasks, which did not differ, suggesting that this region is involved in orthographic processing to a greater extent than phonological or semantic processing. In addition, a region in the right mid-fusiform gyrus exhibited a similar effect. This right mid-fusiform activity may relate to the use of pictorial Chinese characters. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

In this study, we present the analyses stemming from a survey administered to 2149 foreign language learners at Michigan State University. We had three goals. First, we aimed to compile a profile of language learners' technological acumen, access to and ownership of technology, and the current uses of technology across a wide range of languages being studied. Second, we wanted to investigate whether learners, when grouped by language of study (commonly taught or less-commonly taught), differed in their knowledge, ownership, or uses of technology. Third, we wanted to relate these data to the learners' receptiveness to a proposed increase in the amount of technology used for language instruction. Significant differences in the variables were found in terms of level of academic study and the classification of the language being learned (commonly taught versus less-commonly taught and Roman alphabet versus non-Roman alphabet). These differences reflect the recent discussions on the preparedness of students for increases in computer-assisted language learning and hybrid and distance language classes. (Contains 7 tables and 5 notes.)

Much attention has been paid in the literature to matters of script choice vis-a-vis languages. This attention, however, has focused on script choice in a national and political context. By contrast, there has not been any significant attention paid to more local and idiosyncratic instances of script choice operating on an individual and community level. These instances may take place when recourse is made to script as a "most appropriate technology" on a pragmatic and functional basis. The examples outlined in this article occur in a multilingual diasporic setting. This article will seek to describe and, to an extent, interpret a recently observed religio-literacy practice in which participants make recourse to Roman script in their endeavours to record, memorise and share poetic verses and song lyrics composed in languages traditionally associated with non-Roman scripts. In a related example, the use of Roman script as a pedagogical "shortcut" to the learning of a classical non-Roman script will complement the discussion on the nature of script choice in a context where "choice" is problematic. It has been noted that new scripts often render literary traditions inaccessible. This article presents findings where, in certain respects, the opposite is occasionally true with a replacement script providing a means to access literary traditions otherwise out of reach. (Contains 7 figures and 10 notes.)