Article published in:
Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報)
Vol. 55:1 (2020) ► pp. 1–23

L2 learning of opaque Chinese compounds through elaborative encoding

| Carnegie Mellon University

Chinese compounds consist of two to four characters but function as single word. If the compounds are semantically opaque and contain unfamiliar characters, learners will resort to learning them individually by rote. However, given the large number of Chinese compounds, rote learning can place an excessive burden on memory. To facilitate L2 learning of opaque Chinese compounds, the present study proposes a method called elaborative encoding. In this study, L2 learners were given a booklet with 26 two-character opaque compounds. With elaborative encoding, participants learned the English meanings of the compounds through short metaphorical explanations. With rote memorization, participants learned the compounds’ English meanings without any explanation. To test the effects of elaborative encoding, a Chinese-to-English translation task was conducted immediately after training, five days later, and 14 days later. The results showed elaborative encoding was superior to rote memorization in retaining the meanings of the opaque compounds.

Keywords: opaque Chinese compound, L2-Chinese learning, elaborative encoding, intervention
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • Opaque Chinese compounds with metaphors
    • How do L1/L2 speakers deal with opacity?
    • Elaborative methods of learning L2 words
  • The present study
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
      • Intervention
      • Testing sessions
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/csl.20001.gao
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