CFL learners’ real-time processing of Chinese radicals: an eye-tracking study

This study used eye-tracking to investigate the real-time processing of phonetic and semantic radicals (components of Chinese characters that give clues to their pronunciation and meaning) by intermediate-level university Chinese foreign language (CFL) learners. Additionally, the study examined how knowledge and awareness of radicals affect real-time character processing. Real-time radical processing involves identifying radicals and understanding their phonetic or semantic roles, while real-time character processing includes recognizing radicals and instantly comprehending entire characters' meanings and pronunciations. This study's first task focuses on radical processing, where CFL learners use radical knowledge to interpret multiple characters simultaneously. The second task extends this to identifying each character's meaning and pronunciation through their radical knowledge. Results showed that both semantic and phonetic radicals were important, but CFL learners had a preference for phonetic radicals. Although awareness of the function of radicals on its own did not have a strong effect, knowledge of specific radicals did, with knowledge of semantic radicals having a stronger effect on online processing and knowledge of phonetic radicals having a stronger effect on offline recognition. These results align with previous eye-tracking research on Chinese first language (L1) speakers, suggesting that explicit radical instruction could improve character decoding for intermediate CFL learners.