Preschoolers’ knowledge of chinese radicals and character recognition

This study aims to examine the developmental trajectory of 3-to 6-year-old preschoolers’ radical knowledge in Taiwan and investigate the correlation between their radical knowledge and character recognition. A total of 107 preschool children between 3 to 6 years old from four nursery schools in Taiwan participated in the experiment. In order to evaluate young children’s knowledge of Chinese radicals, 30 Chinese radicals were chosen as test items and paired with resembling pictorial symbols, or Latin, Korean, Japanese alphabets. In the experiment, children were asked to choose one symbol that was “more like Chinese character” from each pair of cards. The results showed that: (a) Children younger than 4 years of age, even those who could read no simple Chinese characters, showed an awareness of the structure of radicals. (b) Preschoolers’ radical knowledge generally increased with age; however, there were individual differences among children within the same age. (c) There was a significant positive correlation between children’s radical knowledge and character recognition.