Nontransparent Compound Character Learning in L2 Chinese: Does Radical Awareness Always Work?

Chinese character learning requires various reading subskills, such as radical awareness and character knowledge. Radical awareness refers to learners’ ability to identify, analyze, and apply semantic radicals in compound characters. Previous studies have shown that radical awareness and character knowledge facilitate learning semantically transparent characters. Yet, little is known regarding whether radical awareness plays an active role in the meaning retention for nontransparent characters. The meanings of transparent characters, such as “河” (river) containing the radical “氵” (water), are related to the semantic category of the radicals within the characters, whereas the meanings of nontransparent characters, such as “淑” (kind and gentle) with the same radical “氵,” are not directly related to the radicals. To fill these gaps, this study included 39 L2 Chinese learners at one American university. They completed one character-learning session, and five radical-related and character-related tasks. The results suggested that radical awareness did not positively affect the meaning retention for nontransparent characters when learners’ character knowledge was controlled. In addition, character knowledge was a moderator, which shaped the relationship between radical awareness and character retention. Pedagogical implications for the understanding of L2 Chinese compound character learning are discussed.