Multimedia Redundancy Effect in Learning Chinese with Pinyin

Abstract

The reported study was aimed at developing effect ive techniques for reducing learner cognitive overload while using pinyin (a ph onetic system) to learn Chinese language. Learning effects of two instructional con ditions (character-pinyin-pronunciation and character-pronunciation) were compared for lear ners with different levels of prior Mandarin proficiency and pinyin knowledge. It was e xpected that the effectiveness of eliminating redundant on-screen pinyin might depend on levels of learner prior knowledge. Results demonstrated superiority of the character-pronunciation condition over the character-pinyin-pronunciation condition f or learners with a lower prior knowledge level. No differences between the two con ditions were found for learners with higher levels of prior knowledge.