published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-301). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xxiv, 301 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 1999. / Abstract. Some parts in Chinese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-312).

Learning Chinese characters is challenging for many people, especially for those who were not born in Chinese-speaking countries. Applying the theory of chunking, constructing stories containing compound characters as mnemonic techniques to form associations within the learners, this study examines if this method can facilitate immediate learning and retention of Chinese characters. A case study strategy is adopted and a native language teaching class of Chinese in Sweden with six pupils is chosen as the case. Six participants were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The participants in the experimental group learned Chinese characters with the method of chunking and association, while the control group learned characters with the stroke order. The tests results indicated that the experimental group received better results than the control group, especially in the character tests. The experimental group used chunking, radicals and associative interpretations as strategies in the character and meaning tests. The control group on the other hand passed the meaning tests very well. Surprisingly, the control group also used associative interpretation and only scored lower than the experimental group by a small margin in the meaning tests. The experimental group experienced that chunking a character into its corresponding chunks and radicals facilitates the memorization of characters. Consequently, this case study concludes that the method of chunking and association is beneficial for the understanding and learning of Chinese characters. This case study also concludes that the knowledge of the method of chunking and association can improve the learning of the meaning of characters.

La notion d' iconicité¦ est devenue aujourd'hui un sujet fécond au sein de la linguistique cognitive occidentale. Nous avons choisi d'étudier le problème de l'iconicité dans le cadre de la grammaire du chinois. Comme toute langue " idéographique", le chinois mandarin relève évidemment d'une iconicité de haut degré par son écriture. Dans l'histoire de linguistique chinoise, beaucoup d'é¦tudes ont été faites sur la ressemblance entre la forme du caractère chinois et le sens qu'il représente. Or, c'est depuis une trentaine d'années que nous avons commencé à développer la notion d'iconicité dans les domaines phonétique et syntaxique, avec l'introduction de la linguistique cognitive en Chine. Dans cette thèse, nous allons développer la notion d'iconicité dans la grammaire du chinois à travers trois aspects : la phonétique, l'écriture chinoise et la syntaxe. D'abondants exemples serviront de fil organisateur à notre exposé. / The notion of iconicity has become an interesting topic in the Western cognitive linguistics today. We chose to study the problem of iconicity in the context of Chinese grammar. Like any "ideographic" language, the Mandarin Chinese reveal a high degree of iconicity by his writing. In the history of Chinese linguistics, many studies have been done on the similarity between the form of the Chinese character and the sense which it represents. However, we only began to develop the notion of iconicity in the phonetic and syntactic domains with the introduction of cognitive linguistics in China thirty years ago. In this thesis, we will develop the notion of iconicity in the grammar of Chinese in three aspects by giving abundant exemples: phonetics, Chinese characters and syntax.

The use of still images in instruction has a long history in the field of education. With the widespread use of microcomputers and the development of graphic software, the ability to create and use animated images has greatly increased; today many people use animated images in their teaching and training activities. Since the use of different types of images in instruction has various influences on students'learning results, the different effects between animated images and still images have been studied widely among researchers. However, the research results are not consistent. Some research results show that animated images are more effective than still images and some show no difference or less effective results. This experimental study explores the effects of animated images and still images on college students' learning of motion-related tasks and non-motion related tasks, with the students possessing different levels of field dependence-independence. This study found that: For learning tasks involving motion and/or change, animated images were more effective than still images for college students, and field dependent students benefited more from animated images than did the field independent students. However, for learning tasks that did not involve motion or change, there was no difference in learning results from the use of still images as opposed to animated images. In addition, for such learning tasks, there was no difference in the learning benefits of still images to field dependent versus field independent learners. / Ph. D.