A critical analysis of the use pinyin as a substitute of Chinese Characters

Abstract

The present research paper critically examines use of pinyin as a substitute of characters by Zimbabwean students during acquisition of Chinese language. A questionnaire survey and character recognition survey was done and it was discovered that the use of pinyin as a substitute for Chinese characters negatively affects the acquisition of more complex characters. It was concluded that since each Chinese character is an individual morpheme that carries meaning, therefore dependence on Chinese pinyin negatively affects vocabulary acquisition. The paper recommends that use of pinyin in teaching Chinese language should be limited to the first few weeks, because pinyin was developed to help students acquire the phonetic system of Chinese language rather than the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar. The paper suggests that there is need to explore more ways of balancing the teaching of pinyin and characters in a way that will motivate learners to like Chinese language.

Children’s neurodevelopment of reading is affected by China’s language input system in the information era

“…After several years of character reading and writing practices, intermediate readers (9-11 years old) start to develop the concepts of radicals and character components 19,20 . Since then, their dependence on pinyin is expected to drop because pinyin cannot replace Chinese characters in any way 58 . The over-reliance on pinyin for intermediate and skilled Chinese readers could slow down the learner's path to build a solid foundation for character recognition and reading fluency.…”