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This article was downloaded by: [University of Kiel]On: 09 November 2014, At: 06:30Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Early Years: An International ResearchJournalPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceye20
Chinese preschool children's literacydevelopment: from emergent toconventional writingLily Chan a , Cheng Zi Juan a & Chan Lai Foon ba Faculty of Education , The Chinese University of Hong Kongb Po Leung Kuk Tin Ka Ping Siu Hong KindergartenPublished online: 14 Sep 2010.
To cite this article: Lily Chan , Cheng Zi Juan & Chan Lai Foon (2008) Chinese preschool children'sliteracy development: from emergent to conventional writing, Early Years: An InternationalResearch Journal, 28:2, 135-148, DOI: 10.1080/09575140801945304
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575140801945304
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Chinese preschool children’s literacy development: from emergent toconventional writing
Lily Chana*, Cheng Zi Juana and Chan Lai Foonb
aFaculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; bPo Leung Kuk Tin Ka Ping SiuHong Kindergarten
A Chinese script is represented by Chinese characters and each character is asquare-shaped configuration with condensed strokes. Children in Hong Kong areexplicitly taught to write at a very young age. They are guided to draw verticaland horizontal lines at age three, and are required to write simple characters withfew strokes at age four. When children are ready for formal schooling at age six,many of them can write around 50–60 characters. Typical writing lessons consistof penmanship drills and assigned character copying tasks, but in somepreschools teachers have begun to change the writing curriculum and make adistinction between emergent literacy and conventional literacy. Early writingsare marked by scribbles, drawings and invented spellings, and these are regardedas signs of active exploration for children to understand the writing system. Thepresent study introduces the learning experience of a four-year-old girl who wasencouraged by her teacher and parents to be an emergent writer. Her writingswent through several stages of development within a year, and her spontaneousexperiments with writing in the initial stage contributed significantly to herbecoming a fairly independent and confident writer.
Keywords: written Chinese; early childhood education; literacy development
Introduction
Evidence has been gathered in the past 30 years demonstrating that preschool
children brought up in a literate society actively make sense of the print they
encounter. If they are provided with opportunities to engage in reading and writing
activities, they can develop many insights into the functions of written language for
themselves. It is believed that significant written language development can occur
during this preschool stage (Goelman et al. 1984; Farr 1985; Teale and Sulzby 1986).
The term ‘emergent’ was introduced to describe features of early reading and writing
development as distinct from those expected in conventional literacy. In this
emergent stage, children begin to match spoken words with print, to recognize some
words in their environment, and to engage in pretend reading and writing activities.
Young children learn to capture their own ideas through symbols, beginning with
pictures and scribbling, and eventually learn the letters/characters that are used in
their society. They also learn to use writing for their own purposes – to record
information and to express their own ideas.
Early literacy develops through stages during which the conflicting information
provided by the complex written language system has to be assimilated and
accommodated (Ferreiro 1986), and which are marked by children making apparent
progress and then seeming to regress. In order to be able to write, children have to
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Early Years
Vol. 28, No. 2, July 2008, 135–148
ISSN 0957-5146 print/ISSN 1472-4421 online
# 2008 TACTYC
DOI: 10.1080/09575140801945304
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understand the relationship between speech and print, the differentiation between
drawing and writing, and the orthographic structure of a particular script. A number
of studies have documented the kind of learning that is essential for children to learn
an English script. For example, Read (1971) depicts the amazing journey children
have to go through to make sense of the sound–letter correspondence, and Clay(1975) highlights a series of graphemic principles children have to develop in order to
learn to write and spell using alphabets. There are only a handful of studies that
examine literacy learning in Chinese, especially its emergent stage. Written Chinese is
the oldest script still in use today, and the earliest Chinese writing in existence dates
back 3500 years. The following section provides a brief description of written
Chinese and its orthographic structure.
What is written Chinese?
Chinese has long been classified as a logographic language, which refers to the use of
symbols to represent words or morphemes. Temple (Temple et al. 1988) uses theterm ‘ideographic writing’ and describes Chinese writing as a system based on the
principle of using a single symbol to represent an idea. This statement, however, is
only partly correct, as only around 10% of the characters still in use today are
ideographic in nature, and originated from pictorial or symbolic depiction. Over 90%
of the characters consist of at least some linguistic information that provides
phonological and/or semantic cues (Zhu 1987). A character is a squared-shaped
configuration made up of strokes and the combination of strokes forming stroke-
patterns. While strokes provide only graphic information, stroke-pattern in acharacter normally provides linguistic information to get to the meaning and
pronunciation. As for the size of the Chinese lexicon, about 3000 characters account
for 99% of the total frequency of Chinese words in modern books and newspapers in
mainland Chinese, according to the Foreign Languages Press Beijing (1989).
According to another survey in Taiwan, there are about 4500 characters and about
40,000 words in daily use (Liu et al. 1975).
Orthographic units of written Chinese
The Chinese script looks very different from an alphabetic script because the basicorthographic units of the two scripts are very different. Written English has three
principal structural levels (letter, word and sentence), whereas Chinese has five levels
(stroke, stroke-pattern, character, word and sentence) (Figure 1). A stroke is the
smallest writing unit in Chinese. There are eight types of strokes commonly in use,
such as dots, lines and hooks. The number of strokes in a character can vary from
one to over 20. Similar to alphabetic writing, there is a sequence for putting the
strokes together to form Chinese characters. Putting letters in order is simple in
English since all words are written in a linear, left to right direction. But Chinesecharacters are two-dimensional; the sequence might start anywhere, with no set end-
point. It is believed that a fixed sequence of strokes for all characters can prevent any
strokes from being left out, and characters can be remembered better if proper
sequence is observed.
Stroke-patterns are formed by putting individual strokes together. Many stroke-
patterns can be used as characters in isolation, or they can be used as components in
complicated characters. The total number of stroke-patterns commonly in use is
136 Lily Chan et al.
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estimated to be in the hundreds. Unlike strokes, most stroke-patterns are
pronounceable, and have a meaning of their own.
A character can be classified as simple or complicated. A simple character
consists of only one stroke-pattern and a complicated character is formed from two
or more stroke-patterns. Every Chinese character is confined to a fixed region,
irrespective of the number of strokes in a character. Simple and complicated
characters all occupy the same prescribed area in regular printed materials. The same
does not hold for alphabetic scripts, where the greater the number of letters, the
longer the string. Characters can be written either in vertical columns from the top
down, or in horizontal columns from left to right.
In English, a word is identified by the space at either end of a letter string in a
text. In Chinese, a word can be written using one character, two characters or three
characters with no graphic linkage between the characters to indicate the boundary
of a word.
Figure 1. Orthographic units in written Chinese.
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A sentence consists of words. Characters in text are evenly spaced with no extra
space between words. Readers have to segment character strings into words for
comprehension. Segmenting larger segments in Chinese sentences is the same as in
English text; clause and phrase boundaries are indicated by commas and sentence
boundaries are marked by full stops.
Children learning written Chinese
Many studies have demonstrated that visual skills are important in learning to read
Chinese. Visual skills have been found to relate to Chinese reading at first grade (Lee
et al. 1986) as well as at third grade (Huang and Hanley 1995). Ho and Bryant (1997)
found that differences in visual-perceptual skills in preschool children significantly
predict reading ability one year later. Hanley et al. (1999) highlighted the importance
for children to be able to distinguish thousands of different visual symbols in order
to become proficient readers of Chinese. Given that Chinese characters are more
visually distinct than words in an alphabetic script (Chen 1996), children are likely to
rely heavily on visual strategies to learn to read new characters. In an earlier study
(Chan and Nunes 1998), we found that preschool children were able to recognize
the positions of stroke-patterns, and were able to recognize graphically acceptable
stroke-patterns at a character level.
In phonological processing, five-year-old preschool children can use one-to-one
correspondence to match a syllable to a character when they read (Lee 1989; Chan
1990). This finding is consistent with studies carried out with young children reading
alphabetic script (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982), and confirms that even preschool
children have little difficulty matching a syllable to a written word.
How can all these studies contribute to our understanding of preschool children’s
writing development? It appears that Chinese children have already acquired some
rudimentary knowledge of the written language system, and they can apply this
knowledge if they are given an opportunity to write. Writing one’s own name has
always been regarded as an important landmark in a child’s early literacy
development. Children can usually write their own names at a more advanced
developmental level compared with writing other unfamiliar words (Tolchinsky-
Landsman and Levin 1987; Scarlett 1989). In order to examine whether Chinese
children can write their own names at preschool level, Chan and Louie (1992) invited
60 children, aged 2–6 years from Hong Kong to draw a picture of themselves and
write their own name. It was found that 75% of the five-year-olds could write their
names correctly, and more than 50% of the four-year-olds could use strokes and
stroke-patterns to make appropriate writing. As for the three-year-olds, 75% of them
could differentiate drawing from writing, but only 20% of them were able to produce
appropriate writing. More studies are needed to trace this crucial developmental
stage and examine how preschool literacy practices can support children to gradually
develop their understanding of Chinese writing.
In Hong Kong, over 98% of children from two to six years of age are sent to
either nurseries or kindergartens (Chan and Chan 2003). Literacy instruction begins
at age three, when children are systematically introduced to learning to read and
write Chinese. The literacy activities include character recognition, storybook
reading and guided writing. Li (2005) observed that insufficient attention is given to
reading activities in most preschools in Hong Kong, reading sessions are short and
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infrequent, and there are insufficient books available in the classroom for children to
read. Teachers spend a lot of time helping children to recognize individual
characters. They introduce one to two new characters every day, pronounce them,
and explain the graphic structure of the characters. A typical character recognition
activity lasts 20–30 minutes, during which children are required to sit together andpay attention to the teacher. The teacher introduces the pronunciation of the
character and then shows the children how to write it, paying a lot of attention to the
placement and order of strokes. Children are required to practice writing the newly
taught character in the following group session, and the teacher walks around to
check whether the character is correctly written in exercise books marked with big
squares. If the character is not correctly written, individual guidance is provided. In
the reception class (for children aged five) in some preschools, guided writing is
introduced, children are encouraged to make sentences with some of the taughtvocabularies, and they are encouraged to write short sentences on their own.
Learning to write is regarded as the outcome of writing instruction, and precision
and accuracy in character formation are the major criteria for good writing at
preschool level.
Recently, the emergent view in literacy acquisition has been attracting the
attention of some preschool teachers. Reading and writing are treated as a means to
engage children in literacy, rather than an end to ensure that children learn a
particular set of characters or sentence structures. They are more aware of the impactof environmental print, they introduce more stories to class, and they observe how
each child is actively making sense out of print in his or her unique way. The
developmental approach to writing is adopted, and writing can be drawing,
scribbling or invented characters. Children are told that writing is fun, and they are
encouraged to write for meaningful, authentic literacy events. The following section
describes the kind of changes being introduced in a preschool classroom, and the
impact on writing development for a young child.
Methodology
This study uses a longitudinal case study of a four-year-old girl to investigate howshe interpreted both the forms and functions of the Chinese writing system. A total
of 30 pieces of writing were collected from the child within a period of 12 months,
from age 4 years 5 months to 5 years 4 months. A variety of data collection methods
were used to capture the child’s progress and kind of support that facilitated her
becoming an independent writer.
The participant
Ting-ting was brought up in a typical Hong Kong family. Her father was a driver
and her mother was a full-time housewife. She had an elder brother three years olderthan her. At home, she could observe various literacy activities such as her parents
reading newspapers, and her brother doing his homework.
Ting-ting enrolled in a preschool in Hong Kong when she was three years of age.
She enjoyed going to school, and actively participated in activities. In school, she
loved to draw and play with other children. The literacy curriculum of her preschool
included storybook reading, singing songs, discussing and acting out stories, and
writing a variety of texts. Children gathered together to listen to stories in the
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morning. They were invited to spend time in the comfortable reading area, which
was equipped with big books, poems, puppets and tape-recorders. In the writing
area, teachers placed different kinds of writing paper, pencils, crayons and name
stamps on the shelves, and a whiteboard to display children’s work. A writing
routine was set up, and children were encouraged to draw pictures and write aboutwhat interested them on a weekly basis. From time to time, the teacher demonstrated
proper ways to write Chinese characters to help children to understand the graphic
conventions of written Chinese. At the same time, children were told that they were
writers, and were encouraged to express their ideas in drawing, scribbles, and in
characters or words that they knew.
Tin-ting was very interested in the print in the environment and her subsequent
spontaneous experiments with writing. She spent a lot of time in the reading and
writing areas, reading stories, poems, and enjoying herself with various writingactivities.
Results
Ting-ting’s writing could be divided into three stages. Each piece of writing was
analyzed according to its superordinate graphic features and its ordinate graphic
features (Tolchinsky-Landsman and Levin 1985). Superordinate graphic features
refer to constricted size, presence of units, regularity of blanks and directionality. In
written Chinese, constricted size can be assessed by judging whether all the strokes
are packed into a square-shaped configuration. Presence of units refers to the use of
more than one kind of stroke in forming a character. Regularity of blanks ismeasured by equal space being allocated between characters, and directionality in
written Chinese is correct if the writing is from left to right, or from top to bottom.
One score is given to each category if a written configuration is assessed to have
attained the prescribed requirements.
Ordinate graphic features indicate how well a written configuration can be
treated as a Chinese character, and it can fall into one of the following categories: use
of vertical and horizontal strokes only; approximate writing related to utterance; and
correct writing. A written configuration can be made by using vertical and horizontal
strokes; it may look very much like a Chinese character, but no one can make a guess
regarding what the configuration is about. Approximate writing related to utterance
refers to an attempt to write a correct character, but there are some mistakes made
either in the combination of strokes, or in stroke-patterns. Correct writing indicates
that the choice of character is correct and it is composed accurately. One score is
allocated to any one of the three categories to decide which description is the best fit.
Stage 1: emergent writing
A total of seven pieces of writing were collected and clearly illustrated thecharacteristics of emergent writing in written Chinese. The first piece of writing was
made at the request of the teacher to see if Ting-ting could draw a picture of herself
and write her own name. Ting-ting made a very vivid picture of herself, and began
her first writing task (Figure 2). In her name writing, she demonstrated the presence
of units by using various strokes and stroke-patterns in her writing, but she could not
constrict the size of characters, and made differentiation of the blanks to be allocated
between characters and between stroke-patterns. In addition, Ting-ting had not yet
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acquired the knowledge of directionality of the Chinese writing system. She wrote
her own name upside down, with her surname at the bottom, and the last name on
top. (The surname of Ting-ting is and her given name is . In Chinese, the
whole name is written as , with the surname in front.)
Ting-ting was actively exploring the functions of writing. She wrote a story using
invented spelling and drew a picture with flowers, trees and insects. She wrote, ‘Trees
are pretty, love the nature, rainbow, bees, flowers, butterfly, so happy’ (Figure 3).
She was able to use one-to-one correspondence, matching a character with a syllable
when she read the story. All the written configurations in the story were made-up
characters, but Ting-ting paid attention that none of them was the same. She
manipulated the strokes and stroke-patterns, and created 21 totally different written
configurations. She demonstrated her understanding of two very important rules in
the writing system: matching the sound to the words, and using different symbols to
represent different sounds.
Apart from making stories, Ting-ting wrote diaries in her daily writing routine,
mimicking the habit of her elder brother. One day, Ting-ting told her teacher that she
wanted to write a diary, and began her first diary writing. She used symbols such as
smiling face to represent ‘I’ and ‘me’. She was able to write two simple characters
correctly. When she read, she matched one character to one symbol. She wrote, ‘I
love rainbow, there are butterflies and birds in the sky, and there are pigs, horses and
sheep in the farm. I am very happy. Four years old. My brother loves me. 22-11
(date), (and her name)’ (Figure 4). Table 1 presents the performance of Ting-ting in
Figure 2. Writing of Ting-ting in emergent writing stage (writing 1).
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her writing in three stages. In stage 1, she made a total of 101 written configurations,
with an average of 14 written configurations in each piece of writing. She demonstrated
that she had grasped the superordinate graphic features of the Chinese writing system,
even though she was not able to make many correct pieces of writing.
Stage 2: approximate writing
Ting-ting paid a lot of attention to environmental print, and she was keen to copy
the characters she came across in books or in other reading materials. She copied the
name of her preschool, and made a poster for the preschool supermarket in her
pretend play. She learned the names of her teachers and her best friend in class. She
used both drawing and writing to facilitate her learning; for example, she wrote
down the stages of the growth of a butterfly, she noted down information she found
about the flower, lilac, and she also used drawing and writing to explain how leaves
produce chlorophyll (Figure 5).
A total of 13 pieces of writing were collected in a five-month period. Ting-ting
wrote less in Stage 2 as compared with Stage 1: she made only 118 written
configurations, with an average of nine in each piece of writing. She adopted the
superordinate graphic features in her writing, and improved significantly in the
ordinate graphic features. Through observation and copying, Ting-ting was able to
make 88% correct writing, and 12% approximate writing related to utterance (see
Table 1).
Figure 3. Writing of Ting-ting in emergent writing stage (story writing).
142 Lily Chan et al.
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Stage 3: conventional writing
Ting-ting enjoyed drawing and writing, and initiated a lot of writing activities in
class. She copied the rhymes from the rhyme books (Figure 6), and made her own
poetic lines for pleasure. Writing was also utilized for recording to facilitate learning.
She had also acquired the written ability required for her to make short sentences in
her assignments.
Figure 4. Writing of Ting-ting in emergent writing stage (diary writing).
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Instead of using short phrases or just a few characters, Ting-ting wrote in lines
and paragraphs. She paid attention to the sentence structure, and use punctuation
marks such as commas, full stops and question marks. Her literacy acquisition
enabled her to be more expressive with her feelings, as shown in Figure 4. Ting-ting
missed her grandma and would like to have sent her a present. She took out a book
and copied a rhyme entitled ‘Visiting my grandmother’. There were altogether 24
Table 1. Percentage of written configurations demonstrating superordinate graphic features
and ordinate graphic features, and total number of written configurations in the children’s
writing (Stages 1–3)
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
Superordinate graphic features:
Constricted size 90% 98% 100%
Presence of units 100% 100% 100%
Regularity of blanks 98% 99% 100%
Directionality 97% 98% 100%
Ordinate graphic features:
Use of vertical and horizontal strokes 86% 0% 0%
Approximate writing related to utterance 0% 12% 1%
Correct writing 14% 88% 99%
Number of written configurations:
Total number of written configurations 101 118 216
Average number of written configurations in each writing 14.4 9.1 21.6
Figure 5. Writing of Ting-ting in approximate writing stage.
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characters in the rhyme. Many of them were complicated characters which consisted
of 13 to 20 strokes. It would be impossible for her to be able to remember and copy
these characters unless she had already acquired visual analysis skills, and was able
to segment the characters into stroke-patterns.
It appeared that Ting-ting had also acquired the necessary skills to be able to
write independently. In Stage 3, she made 10 pieces of writing, with a total of 216
characters. The number of characters in each piece of writing increased by 100% as
compared with Stage 2. Not only could she follow the superordinate graphic features
in her writing but she managed to get 99% of her writing correct. Her performance in
Stage 3 was excellent and way above the overall performance of her classmates who
would never venture to using writing for pleasure, or be able to copy a rhyme
without any assistance from the teacher.
Discussion
The case study that we presented describes three distinctive stages that a four-year-
old child has gone through in the process of learning to write. The following five
areas of literacy practices in the preschool have probably facilitated Ting-ting’s
becoming a young writer.
First, teachers have to value children’s imagination and their ability to draw in
order to express their ideas. When Ting-ting was first introduced to writing, her
writing was used as an important source of information for the teacher to
communicate with her. In the initial stage, Ting-ting used a variety of expressive
Figure 6. Writing of Ting-ting in conventional writing stage.
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modes in her writing, experimenting with her writing styles, and explored the graphic
structure of written Chinese. The teacher supported her exploration and observed
her progress. Encouraging Ting-ting to become a writer has allowed her to
externalize her understanding about the environment, and to communicate it to
other people.
Second, visual skills and spatial concepts are important in learning to write
Chinese. From time to time, the teacher conducted demonstrations and lessons to
explain how characters can be segmented into stroke-patterns, how the strokes can
be combined to form a character, and how characters can be written in a proper way.
Ting-ting was given a lot of time to practice what she had learned, which enabled her
to strengthen her fine motor skills and learn how to combine strokes with precision
and accuracy. Ting-ting could hold her pen for a long time, and coped with the
physical demands of the writing tasks. Her writing is legible in the very initial stage
of learning to write, and she demonstrated good handwriting skills. Her fine motor
skills were so well developed that she could draw and write for half an hour at age
five. When automaticity with handwriting is achieved, she can free up mental
capacity to deal with other demands of the writing process, such as compositional
demands.
The third element is encouragement from her teacher, and the constant
reinforcement that Ting-ting is a good writer. The head teacher met up with Ting-
ting every week to discuss her work for one whole year. As a general practice, Ting-
ting was invited to introduce her drawing and writing, and positive feedback was
given to praise the child’s effort. Ting-ting loved her head teacher who was pretty
and happy, and she would like to be like her and be a head teacher when she grows
up. Dunsmuir and Blatchford (2004) point out that teacher assessments of children’s
attitudes to writing are significantly associated with writing competence. This may
not just be a reflection of the child’s attitude as assessed by the teacher, but an
indicator of a positive interaction between them around writing activities.
The fourth element is related to the variety of writing activities Ting-ting was
invited to engage in. Ting-ting’s learning process was supported by a print-rich
environment; the teachers brought to class stories, rhymes and all kinds of books
that were of interest to the children. More flexible arrangements were made for
children to be able to read and write in class. She was provided with regular extended
writing experiences across a range of forms, such as stories, poems, greetings and
note-taking. These activities have been found to be strongly associated with progress
in writing, as reported in the study by Snow et al. (1991)’s longitudinal on five- to
seven-year-old children. Children who have the opportunity to write for different
purposes are found to be more advanced in their writing ability than children whose
teachers provide fewer and narrower writing opportunities.
The last element and probably the most crucial factor is the child’s motivation to
learn to write. Motivated writers enjoy the activity and gain intrinsic satisfaction on
completion of a task. The reason why Ting-ting is so motivated to write is probably
because no one has ever told her that she cannot write, or that what she has written is
incorrect. Children who are anxious that their writings are being judged or assessed
are more likely to state that they do not enjoy it and procrastinate. These children
will have difficulty generating content and are more likely to avoid writing,
displaying higher levels of off-task behavior than motivated writers. The implication
of this case study is that capturing a child’s interest and enjoyment may be the key to
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promoting writing development, and educators need to be aware of the desirability
of providing tasks that children perceive as purposeful and valuable.
The learning process of written Chinese is similar to those learning an alphabetic
script. Chinese children begin their search for the nature of the representational
system of written Chinese. Initially they differentiate drawing and writing, then they
create their own writing with strokes and stroke-patterns, and apply unique graphic
features exclusive for written Chinese in their creative writing. Children gradually
become aware that words convey meaning, and that writing is a vehicle for
transmitting information. They are conscious that ideas must be written in a
conventional way so that other people can understand them too. Children also
acquire the basic understanding of the relationship between script and speech, that
is, the knowledge of one-to-one correspondence between the syllable and the
character in their writing.
The acquisition of ordinate graphic features highlights the specific knowledge to
decode written Chinese. It appears that very young children can perceive visual
features of the graphic displays – linearity, constricted size, non-pictoriality – in their
early writing. Children initially establish their basic writing model using vertical or
horizontal lines, and separate symbol units. The perception of the composition of
strokes and stroke-patterns is increasingly differentiated with age, and is quite well
differentiated by age five. However, it is insufficient merely to rely on this kind of
global graphic and phonological awareness to achieve a higher level of proficiency.
To be able to read and write Chinese, children have to acquire the skill to conduct
intra-character analysis and be able to understand the forms and functions of the
stroke-patterns.
To conclude, there is evidence that Chinese preschool children are actively
exploring the written language system. Emergent literacy can be facilitated in the
preschool setting in Hong Kong, by providing a print-rich environment and quality
adult support. Mastery of the graphic conventions of written Chinese is demanding,
but measures can be introduced to make this learning process more fun and
meaningful.
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