The Effectiveness of Visual Instructions in Memorizing Chinese Semantic Radicals for Beginners

The acquisition of Chinese Characters (CCs) is challenging for learners. Chinese Semantic Radicals (SRs) are semantic components of CCs. The memorization of SRs facilitates the acquisition of CCs when learning Chinese as a second language. This study investigates the effectiveness of Visual Instructions (VIs) in the memorization of SRs by beginners. A preliminary study and three other studies have been conducted. The results have shown that the use of color-coded illustrations helps learners remember the meanings, shapes, and positions of SRs. This could be seen in the significantly increased accuracy of the responses in memory tests. These findings are an important contribution to research on VIs and on the memorization of SRs by beginners.