Online Chinese Reading Behavior with Pinyin and Zhuyin Transcriptions Introduction and Literature Review

The purpose of this study is to analyze eye movements of second language learners of Mandarin Chinese during online reading to determine patterns of attention. I intend to replicate and expand part of Stickler and Shi's (2014) original eye tracking experiments on Chinese second language learners completing an online reading activity with Chinese characters and Pinyin transcription scaffolding. Since Chinese uses characters, reading can prove a daunting task for learners, especially those at the beginning levels (Wang, 2014). I have personally experienced this frustration myself and observed similar difficulties for other students. Although, many characters do contain some phonetic information, it is usually easier for students to learn to read with the help of a phonetic transcription system such as Pinyin, which uses the Roman alphabet “to approximate the pronunciation of Chinese characters” (ibid, p. 53). Often textbooks and reading materials will annotate some or all of the included Chinese characters in such a transcription system, at least for beginner levels, for the benefit of first or second language learners (See Figures 1 and 2).