The major findings and the discussion of the effects are presented and discussed as follows. To begin with, in this section, the form and the meaning are discussed as whole because we aim to see the interaction of forms and meanings. As shown in Table 4-14, forms and meanings are classified into different types of difficulty.
Table 4-14 Corresponding Forms and Meanings in the Revised Hierarchy of Difficulty
Degree Type of Difficulty Form Meaning
Easy Hard
Correspondence same form (SF) same meaning (SM) Semi-correspondence semi-same form (SsF) n/a
Retranslated different form different meaning (DM)
With regard to the present study, the four form-meaning-integrated types of kanji
characters that will be discussed in this section are SF-SM, SF-DM, SsF-SM and SsF-DM.
The different form will not be discussed in this section because the kanji characters in different forms are reformed by Japanese. There are no correspondent forms in Chinese. Thus, no meaning correspondence can be compared.
According to the results of one-way ANOVA, there was a significant difference among the four types of kanji characters (F (3, 90) = 131.921b, p < .001), as shown in Table 4-15.
Table 4-15 Participants’ Overall Performances on the Four Form-Meaning-Integrated Types of Japanese Kanji Characters
Task M SD F
p-value
SF-SM 0.98 0.05 131.921b .000***
SF-DM 0.74 0.2
SsF-SM 0.92 0.09
SsF-DM 0.74 0.2
The results showed that our participants performed significantly better on the SF-SM and the SsF-SM than on the SF-DM and the SsF-DM. The mean scores on the SF-DM and SsF-DM were similar (SF-SM: M = 0.98 > SsF-SM: M = 0.92 > SF-DM: M = 0.74, SsF-DM: M = 0.74). Hence, the significant differences among these four form-meaning-integrated types of
kanji characters showed that our participants’ responses to Japanese kanji characters were
indeed influenced by the type of kanji characters. The learning difficulty of the four types ofkanji characters (from easy to difficult) was SF-SM > SsF-SM > SF-DM = SsF-DM.
Table 4-16 and Table 4-17 further present the within-group differences among four form-meaning-integrated types of kanji characters.
Table 4-16 The p-values for the within-group Differences among Four Form-Meaning- Integrated Types of Japanese Kanji Characters
B I A N
F
53.461 46.269 26.66 7.299P
.000** .000*** .000*** .000***Table 4-17 The Results of Scheffé Post Hoc Analysis (Comparison between Four
Std. Error Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound
4.00
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
The Scheffé post hoc analysis of within-group comparison as shown in the Table 4-16 and the Table 4-17 showed that the SF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p < .001) and the SsF-DM (p < .001) for Group B (F (3, 92) = 53.461, p < .001). The SsF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p < .001) and the SsF-DM (p < .001). As for Group I (F (3, 92) = 46.2693, p < .001), the SF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p < .001) and the SsF-DM (p < .001) while the SsF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p
< .001) and the SsF-DM (p < .001). With regard to Group A (F (3, 92) =26.66, p < .001), the SF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p < .001) and the SsF-DM (p < .001), whereas the SsF-SM was significantly easier than the SF-DM (p < .001) and the SsF-DM (p
< .001). As for the native baseline group (F (3, 92) = 7.299, p < .001), the SF-SM was significantly easier to acquire than the SsF-SM (p < .01) and the SsF-DM (p < .01). Thus, these results showed that the SF-SM and the SsF-SM were easier than the SF-DM and the SsF-DM for Groups B to A.
In general, it was found that the kanji characters in the same form and with the same meaning were considered easier to acquire. However, when we investigated the interaction between forms and meanings, meanings seemed to be the key factor in the present study. If the type contained different meanings as the Retranslated type in the hierarchy of difficulty (e.g. SF-DM and SsF-DM), even it was a kanji characters in the same form as the easiest type (i.e., Correspondence SF-DM); the participants’ performance was still undesirable. This result indicated that meanings were more dominant for our Chinese learners of Japanese to interpret kanji characters. In the meaning section (Section 4.2.2), it was proved meanings could get transferred when there was a semantic similarity. The underlying reason why meanings are so important may be due to the semantic nature of Japanese kanji characters and the features of kanji characters. As mentioned by Kess and Miyamoto (1999), kanji characters form the essence of a sentence or sentences because they are content words.
Halpern (2001) also indicated that when the form of kanji characters was same, the meaning would still change according to the features of kanji characters. For example, 明 as a free character in an on independent word (e.g. 明 mei ‘discernment’ in先見の明 'foresight') and 明 as a bound character in the kun word element (e.g. 明け 'end' in 忌明け 'end of mourning') meant differently. Therefore, the meaning of a kanji character is prior to its form.
Odlin (1989) argued that similar cognates in relation to meanings could help L2 learners spend less effort to understand the target language and new information. Hence, meanings were found more important than forms in the present study.
Furthermore, the overall scores on the four types of kanji characters for each group are presented in Figure 4-3. As can be seen from below, all the experimental groups scored above average. A regular increase was also found in the mean scores for each experimental group.
The mean scores of the native baseline group was the highest followed by Group A.
Figure 4-3 Overall Performances of Each Group on the Four Form-Meaning-Integrated Types of Japanese Kanji Characters
A similar tendency on the proficiency was also found in the between-group comparison as shown in Table 4-18.
Table 4-18 The p-values for the Four Form-Meaning-integrated Types of Japanese Kanji Characters
SF-SM SF-DM SsF-SM SsF-DM
F
3.169 42.891 0.681 23.387P
.028* .000*** .566 .000***According to the between-group comparison of the four form-meaning-integrated types of kanji characters, Group I performed on the SF-DM significantly better than Group B (p
< .01). Group A did not perform significantly better than Group I but they performed significantly better than Group B (p < .001). The native baseline group performed significantly better than all the experimental groups (p < .001). With regard to the SsF-DM,
SF-SM SF-DM SsF-SM SsF-DM
B M 0.96 0.54 0.91 0.57
B SD 0.09 0.18 0.12 0.18
I M 0.98 0.68 0.94 0.69
I SD 0.05 0.14 0.08 0.16
A M 0.99 0.77 0.93 0.77
A SD 0.03 0.12 0.06 0.17
N M 1 0.96 0.94 0.92
N SD 0 0.06 0.08 0.07
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
both of Group I (p < .05) and Group A (p < .001) performed significantly better than Group B although Group A and Group I did not yield a significant difference. The native baseline group significantly outperformed Groups B and I (p < .001) and Group A (p < .01). As for the SF-SM and SsF-SM, the three experimental groups and the native baseline group did not yield any significant difference in the Scheffé post hoc comparison, as shown in Table 4-19.
Table 4-19 The Results of Scheffé Post Hoc Analysis (Comparison within Four
Std. Error Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound
SsF-SM
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
From these results, we could see that Group A performed well on the four form-meaning-integrated types of Japanese kanji characters though they performed differently from the native baseline group. With regard to the participants’ performances on the SF-DM and the SsF-DM, our advanced learners did not achieve the native-like level. The results correlated with our hierarchy of difficulty, and the Retranslated type were indeed challenging for our participants.