對外漢字教學中的「同聲旁字組」分析與應用

Abstract

近年來，由於華文熱席捲全球，對外漢字教學較以往受人矚目，與此相關的理論與方法也比以往多。但研究者在實際教學中，仍然覺得有所不足，欲幫助學生記憶時，常在運用理論根據或自編故事中難以抉擇。尤其是形聲字，形符和聲符如何組合，不易說明。因此想針對常用教材中的「同聲旁字組」進行分析，以獲得可資應用的規則。同時藉此探討字與詞之間的問題，並尋求漢字書寫與認讀的策略。 六書中形聲字的比例最高，而且隨時代而增加。它的來源複雜，判定不易。有關形符表意、聲符表音，大陸學者做過調查，但使用的是簡化字，讀音也和臺灣不盡相同。聲符兼表音意則古今論述雖多，並無定論。在認知心理學方面，視覺心理學上的「眼球跳躍性掃視時的目盲現象」，揭示了人類難以區辨細微差異的癥結，帶給研究者啟示。而根據記憶理論，教師最好在課室中營造出利於學生將來提取的情境。 經過排序，常用教材中的2665 字包括687 個同聲旁字組，其中屬字僅有一或二字的占總組數的59%，屬字在四字以上的占27%，這意味著聲旁的再現率並沒有想像中那麼高。許多字形若非對照古文字，無法解讀；有些字組的發音規則很清晰，但是也有例外；聲符是否兼意不能一概而論，形符則是常表類屬意義。無論形、音、義，在歷史演變的過程中，都曾經發生過訛誤，以致含有部分的不確定性。 將以上所述應用在偏誤分析的結果，發現初級的外籍學生，宜先建立偏旁、基本部首的概念，再補充發音較規則、簡單易認的聲符。隨著學生程度的提高，溝通能力增強，漢字的累積到達一定數量，對中華文化有所認識，「同聲旁字組」才能發揮作用。講述字義時，有理論根據的應轉化成淺顯易懂的內容，理論較曲折或資訊貧乏的，才自編故事。最後，研究者結合字、詞關係，設計附屬於主教材的練習，以期幫助外籍學生書寫與認讀，達到本論文的研究目的。With the increasing interest in learning Chinese worldwide, Chinese character instruction has become more and more a focal point of attention. Scholars and researchers have adopted various theories and approaches, aiming to provide an efficient analysis of Chinese characters and thereby, offer better instruction methods. However, in my daily practice as a language teacher, I still found myself running out of repertoire in helping my students to memorize the characters. In a classroom, an instructor always faces a dilemma, swinging between applying the existing theories and making up a story for a character. It’s particularly tough to make sense of how a semantic radical and a phonetic radical are combined to form a Pictophonetic character. This, however, inspired me to look into the characters listed in the existing textbooks, taking the characters with the same phonetic radicals as the focus of my study, hoping to map out some rules that might help learners to acquire the Chinese characters. At the same time, an investigation into the relationship between characters and words is also conducted while some strategies of learning to write and to recognize characters are also suggested. The number of Pictophonetic characters accounts for the biggest proportion among the six categories of Chinese characters. Its number has been increasing steadily as time goes by. However, the origins of the Pictophonetic characters are hard to identify due to their various sources. Some researchers from Mainland China have looked into the commonly-believed theory that the semantic radical of a character represents its meaning while its phonetic radical tells how it is pronounced. However, such investigations are based on simplified characters. Moreover, some characters are pronounced differently in both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The theory -- “semantic radical representing meanings while phonetic radical representing pronunciation” -- despite being held highly ever since the ancient times, is by no means conclusive. The rise of cognitive psychology, especially the studies in saccades, i.e. the study on the rapid intermittent eye movement, and the succession of discontinuous individual movements of eye field, have inspired researches in many ways. According to theories of memory, contexts provided by instructors in a classroom are most helpful for learners to retrieve their memories. According to statistics, out of the 2,665 most-commonly-used characters in current textbooks, 687 of which are same-phonetic-radical ones. However, a closer observation reveals that as high as 59% of the same-phonetic-radical characters find only one or two members with the same phonetic component, while the number of characters that find four members incorporated with one same single phonetic-radical account for only 27% of the said 687 characters. The findings suggest that the recurrence rate of any single phonetic radical is not as high as one might assume. Some characters are unable to be deciphered unless one refers back to their ancient counterparts. Or, while the pronunciation of some same-phonetic-radical characters is governed by distinctive rules, one finds exceptions constantly. It’s pretty safe to say that the semantic radical indicates how a character is classified; but it’s hard to define if a phonetic radical necessarily tells how a character should be pronounced. In the process of historical evolution, the forms, pronunciation and meanings of Chinese characters all have experienced changes; therefore, it’s inevitable that the origins of some characters are unable to be traced down. Our findings and the error analysis of learners’ corpus suggest that for beginners, the instructor should first introduce them the concept of radicals and some basic radicals, before phonetic radicals that follow certain rules in pronunciation and can be easily recognized as one group are introduced. Only when the learners have achieved certain proficiency level and have acquired certain number of Chinese characters, together with certain understanding of Chinese culture, then the concept of “same-phonetic-radical characters” will make sense to the learners. In introducing the meaning of the characters, it is suggested that the instructor should put it in a simple, comprehensible language if there is a theory behind the coding of such a character. Only when the theory is too complicated or obscure, then the instructor is encouraged to make up a story for the said character. Finally, we have designed some supplementary exercises to the main textbook based on our findings. Hopefully, it will help achieve the goal of this study, i.e. to help second language learners to read and write Chinese characters.