Raising Orthographic Awareness of Teachers of Chinese
RESULTS
Corrective Strategies Articulated in the Think-Aloud Protocols
Table 3 summarizes the participants’ qualitative comments on types of corrective strategies and gives the number of responses for each strategy. Based on the method of correction, the corrective strategies are classified into three categories: (1) direct correction (i-iii), in which the teacher explicitly points out the error and addresses it with intercharacter component analysis, stroke analysis, and repeated writing; (2) indirect correction (iv-vi), in which the teacher implicitly targets the error with modeling writing on board, putting target characters in contexts (i.e., words, phrases, or sentences), and reading aloud; and (3) peer evaluation (vii), in which students read each other’s work and make comments on errors. The results show a strong preference in participants’ beliefs of corrective methods in that there are 156 (73.58%) responses in favor of direct correction (i-iii), 54 (25.47%) in favor of indirect correction (iv-vi), and 2 (0.95%) in favor of peer evaluation (vii). While direct correction was predominant, peer evaluation the trivial.
Table 3. Participants’ qualitative comments on corrective strategies
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i) Intercharacter component analysis 73 (34.43%)
a. 1 would break the character in different parts--color the parts, and point out the error to make students know why the character is wrong.
b. Explicitly explain the constituents of the character and call students’ attention to the configuration and positioning.
c. To correct the error caused by radial omission, the teacher needs to raise the students’ awareness of the radical and explain its semantic meaning.
ii) Stroke analysis 35 (16.51 %)
a. Go over the stroke order. It’s easy to lose strokes all the way if you do not have exact stroke order in hand.
b. Emphasize stroke order. Do stroke count. Teacher writes the character on board stroke by stroke and have the students do stroke count while imitating.
c. To correct this error, the teacher needs to work at the stroke level, compare the stroke order, and call students' attention to stroke differences.
iii) Repeated writing 48 (22.64%)
a. For graphemic errors, students have to repeat writing them. Practice makes perfect.
b. Have the student write the character over and over again, maybe a few sentences with the right word.
c. Just a matter of writing it correctly a bunch of times in order to fix it in mind.
d. Repeat writing the character and have the hand know automatically how to write the character.
e. To correct this error, have the student repeat writing for several times to reinforce memory. This is how Chinese children learn characters.
iv) Modeling 7 (3.30%)
a. It is difficult for students to write characters with a large number of strokes, so we just write the correct character on board, component by component, and have the students repeat writing.
b. Write the correct character on board, analyze its structure, and explain the meaning of the radical.
v) Putting target characters in context 46 (21.70%)
a. Using the character in context is the key, because it makes connection between the graph and meaning.
b. Characters are free elements, which must be assembled into words, so we need to put them in context.
c. Have the student write the whole word or a few sentences over and over again so that he can see the variation.
vi) Reading aloud 1 (0.47%)
a. When an error is caused by order switching, have students read the correct phrase aloud, or read aloud in organized activity or sentences on the board.
b. Have the students read aloud while repeat writing the characters to make the sound-graph-meaning connections.
vii) Peer evaluation 2 (0.95%)
Have students read each other’s work, identify and analyze errors. This will help strengthen their memory.
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Total 212 (100%)
