A study of pictographs in Shuowen Jiezi and their application to the teaching of modern Chinese characters
Publicado en línea: 25 sept 2025
Recibido: 04 ene 2025
Aceptado: 03 may 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-1020
Palabras clave
© 2025 Li Guo, published by Sciendo.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Chinese characters are ideograms, and their glyphs are linked in meaning to the words they record. When the ancestors created characters, they depicted the image of the time corresponding to a certain word as a symbol to record the word, which became the original pictogram. Hieroglyphic characters are the basis of Chinese character formation, and the construction of other characters is mostly related to them. Therefore, the analytical study of pictographs in “Shuowen Jiezi” has an important position in the study of Chinese characters [1-4].
“Shuowen Jiezi” is a masterpiece compiled by Xu Shen, a famous scribe and literalist of the Eastern Han Dynasty, who devoted nearly thirty years of hard work to its compilation. It is the first dictionary in the history of China that analyzes the shape of characters, identifies the sound and reading, and explains the meaning of characters, with 9,353 characters and 1,163 rewritten words, making a total of 10,506 characters, which are listed according to the 540 radicals [5-8]. It embodies the ancient people’s profound understanding of Chinese characters and their rigorous attitude towards learning, and has made indelible contributions to the standardization and normalization of Chinese characters [9-11]. After more than a thousand years, the book still has a profound influence on the modern teaching of Chinese characters, the study of ancient documents, and the transmission of history and culture, and is an important bridge connecting ancient and modern Chinese character culture. In modern Chinese character teaching, “Shuowen Jiezi” plays a crucial role [12-15].
Incorporating “Shuowen Jiezi” into modern Chinese character teaching can not only promote students’ precise understanding and deep knowledge of Chinese characters, but also be a vivid practice of inheriting and innovating Chinese culture [16-17]. By incorporating multimedia technology, implementing phased teaching, designing interactive learning activities and focusing on practical application strategies, it can not only stimulate students’ interest in learning, but also cultivate their critical thinking and cultural self-awareness [18-21]. “Shuowen Jiezi”, as the source of Chinese characters, is illuminating the new path of modern Chinese character teaching with its millennia-spanning wisdom, so that the ancient characters can take on a new luster in contemporary times [22-24].
This paper illustrates the significance of “Shuowen Jiezi” for the teaching of Chinese characters by deconstructing the part of “Shuowen Jiezi” where hieroglyphs are said to be explained. The contribution and influence of “Shuowen Jiezi” in the teaching of Chinese characters are assessed from both phonetic and lexical perspectives. Based on modern teaching perspectives, multimedia-assisted teaching and interactive learning modes are used to integrate “Shuowen Jiezi” into the teaching of Chinese characters in the classroom. Analyze the current status of the application of “Shuowen Jiezi” in modern teaching of Chinese characters, and examine the applicability of the pedagogy based on “Shuowen Jiezi” in modern teaching through teaching practice. Based on the law of memorization and forgetting, design pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test questions. Compare and analyze the differences in scores to verify the superiority of the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” and to study the drawbacks of the traditional teaching mode. Compare the test results from both horizontal and vertical perspectives, collect students’ feedback through questionnaire survey method, and argue the feasibility of multimedia-assisted teaching.
Shuowen Jie Zi is the first dictionary in Chinese history to analyze the shape of characters and explain the meaning of words, and it is a systematic monograph on Chinese characters. There are six main explanations of the author Xu Shen’s object glyphs. They are “pictogram”, “like the shape of so-and-so”, “like so-and-so”, “from so-and-so, like so-and-so”, “from so-and-so, like so-and-so”, and “from so-and-so, pictogram”.
Those who say “pictograms”, a total of 85 words. Example: The word “mouth”, “Shuowen • Mouth”: “People are so talking.” Pictographic. Those who say “like the shape of so-and-so”, a total of 44 words. Example: The word “tooth”, “Shuowen • Tooth”: “Peony tooth also.” Like the shape of the upper and lower phases. Those who say “like so-and-so” have a total of 23 words. Example: The word “rate” “Shuowen • Rate Department”: “Bird hunting.” Like silk, up and down its rod handle also. Those who say “from so-and-so, like so-and-so”, a total of 8 words. Example: The word “Mou” “Shuowen • Niubu”: “Niu Mingye.” From the ox, as its voice comes out of the mouth. Those who say “from a certain shape, like a certain shape”, a total of 7 characters. Example: The word “only” is “Shuo Wen • Only Department”: “The words are also.” From the mouth, like the shape of the breath downward. Those who say “from a certain and a pictogram” have a total of 7 characters. Example: The word “nest” “Saying Wen • Nest Department”: “The bird is called a nest on the wood, and it is said to be a hole in the hole.” From wood, pictograms.
It can be found that Xu Shen’s interpretation was based on the characteristics of the glyphs of the pictographs. After comparing the counted hieroglyphic characters according to their specific interpretations with the hieroglyphic characters mentioned earlier, which are categorized into all hieroglyphic characters, some hieroglyphic characters and conjoined hieroglyphic characters, the categorization results are shown in Table 1.
Results of pictographic word classification
| Global pictograph | Partial pictograph | Conjoined pictograph | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pictographic characters | 75 | 0 | 10 |
| Characters depicting the shape of object | 25 | 10 | 9 |
| Characters resembling object | 17 | 0 | 6 |
| Characters composed of component with a depiction of object | 6 | 0 | 2 |
| Characters combining component and the pictorial form of object | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Characters derived from component with pictographic attributes | 7 | 0 | 0 |
As can be seen from Table 1:
All six explanations have word counts. The words “like shape” the largest number of words, of which the proportion of the whole of the elephant-shaped accounted for the largest. And from the distribution of pictograms, all the pictograms of the largest number of words, part of the pictograms of the smallest number of words, and only say “like the shape of so-and-so” only. The word “figurative” generally refers to the most intuitive appearance of an object. Whether it is a whole hieroglyph or a conjoined hieroglyph. Moreover, these characters are more concise in terms of language. The same should be true for those who “come from a certain pictogram”, except that the word and the “so-and-so” from which it is derived should be a type of thing or of the same nature, and the “so-and-so” has already been expressed in the “Shuowen”. Those who say “like the shape of so-and-so” are mostly pictographic, and the color is not as obvious as that of “pictogram”, and there are similarities with the image of those who say “pictogram”. Or the characteristics of a certain part of the character are too obvious in the process of taking images, or even cover up the overall characteristics of the character, and the characteristics of the part are used as explanations. Or the structure of the object is too complicated, and the explanation is too cumbersome, and finally chooses a concise explanation. “From so-and-so, like a certain form” is similar to him, except that the “so-and-so” from which it is derived has a previous interpretation or that the word is of the same nature or type as the “so-and-so” from which it is derived. If the word “like so-and-so” is used, the object has no outstanding features when the word is taken again, but its object is similar to the object with distinctive characteristics, and does not have any intersection with the object, so the object with the distinctive characteristics is used as the object of explanation. “From so-and-so, like so-and-so” is also the same as in the previous two cases, where the “so-and-so” from which the “so-and-so” has appeared in the “Shuowen” or the character from which it is derived is of the same nature or type.
It can be seen from the pictographs listed by Xu Shen in Shuowen that pictographs appeared the earliest and were the most primitive method of creating Chinese characters. It can be said that pictographs are the foundation of Chinese characters, and mastering pictographs is mastering the basic components of Chinese characters and mastering the basis for learning other glyphs.
“Shuowen Jiezi” uses the reverse cutting method to phonetize Chinese characters. The main step is to reverse cut the upper word to take the initials, and the reverse cut to the lower words to take the finals and tones. For example, “East, Dehong Cut”, “Jiang, Ancient Lane Cut”, “Destroyed, Xu Wei Cut”. The reverse cut is mainly reflected in the teaching of tones in the teaching of Chinese characters. Tone teaching has always been a difficult problem in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Chinese is one of the few tonal languages in the world. There are four tones in Chinese: Yin Ping, Yang Ping, Shang Sheng, and Go Sheng, and the acquisition of tones is often a major difficulty in learning Chinese. Taking “Jiang, Ancient Lane Cutting” as an example, in the acquisition of tones, students will learn the tone of “Jiang” on the basis of acquiring lanes, which will be relatively less difficult and may have a better learning effect
Vocabulary is a general term for all, or a specific range of, words and fixed phrases in a language. Teaching Chinese characters includes the teaching of words and phrases. Vocabulary is the foundation of teaching Chinese characters, and improving students’ vocabulary is the main purpose of teaching. Only by mastering a certain amount of vocabulary can we be better able to communicate in daily life. In order to expand vocabulary, the first step is to recognize the shape of the characters. The method adopted in the whole text of “Shuowen Jiezi” is to analyze the glyphs of each character first, and finally to determine the definition of vocabulary. “Shuowen Jiezi” systematically organizes the Chinese characters according to their glyphs and divides the 9,353 Chinese characters into 540 sections. “Shuowen Jiezi” uses “radicals” to categorize Chinese characters. The categorization of radicals and the recognition of characters from different categories of radicals help to expand students’ vocabulary. For example, learn “辟” and related words, such as: 僻, 避, 壁, 璧, 薜, 襞, 嬖, 躄, 廦, etc., they have the same or similar pronunciation, and 兹-滋, 嗞, 茲, 孳 and other words.
The main purpose of “Shuowen Jiezi” is to explore the origin of the characters and to explain the intent of the ancients in creating them. The Chinese characters themselves have a strong correlation. Teaching Chinese characters allows students to understand and explore the origin of the characters and deepen their understanding and memorization of the characters. Teaching Chinese characters often takes the form of teaching a single vocabulary word, which makes acquisition difficult and ineffective. Teaching a certain type of yiwu based on yiwu is conducive to lowering the difficulty of acquisition and the learning effect may also be better. Acquiring a particular class of yiwu based on the Shuo Wen can greatly improve students’ vocabulary. Taking “stone” as an example, there are more characters in the radicals of “stone”. According to the “stone” as a different tool division, such as means of tools: anvil, inkstone, bian, panpanite; Means weapon class: Nu; There is also the category of building materials: tablets. Chinese glyphs refer to those components that are associated with the meaning of the words represented by Chinese characters. According to the characteristics of form characters, explaining the origin of form characters and distinguishing different form characters are important methods for students to master and understand vocabulary in Chinese character teaching.
When introducing “Shuowen Jiezi” in modern Chinese character teaching, teachers can fully integrate multimedia technology. In the introductory stage, videos and animations can be used to vividly present the origin story of Chinese characters and the relevant records in “Shuowen Jiezi” for students, for example, by animating the initial form of hieroglyphic characters such as “Sun” and “Moon”, so as to let students visualize the evolution of Chinese characters. The students will be able to visualize the evolution of Chinese characters through animation. This step aims to stimulate students’ curiosity and interest in learning, laying a foundation for subsequent in-depth learning. In the lecture stage, interactive whiteboards or online teaching platforms can be used to demonstrate the radicals and the six books theory in “Shuowen Jiezi”. Teachers can demonstrate how to analyze specific Chinese characters according to “Shuowen Jiezi”, and encourage students to use tablets or personal devices to participate in interactions, such as by dragging and dropping radicals to form new characters, and participating in online games on the evolution of glyphs, etc., so as to realize the combination of theory and practice, and to deepen their understanding. In the stage of consolidation and innovation, students can be organized to use multimedia software or programming tools to create their own animations of “character origin stories”, design posters of Chinese characters and culture, or develop simple Chinese character learning apps. These activities can not only consolidate students’ knowledge of “Shuowen Jiezi”, but also enhance their sense of innovation and information technology ability, realizing the perfect integration of traditional culture and modern technology.
In the process of integrating “Shuowen Jiezi” into the teaching of modern Chinese characters, designing interactive learning activities is the key to improving student engagement and learning effectiveness. Before the activity begins, teachers can design a quick quiz or charades game to stimulate students’ curiosity and learning motivation by displaying a few simple Chinese characters mentioned in “Shuowen Jiezi” through multimedia, and letting students try to guess their meanings or origins based on their glyphs. This session aims to create a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere for the formal learning activities, while initially introducing the basic concepts of “Shuowen Jiezi”. Next, students were divided into small groups, with each group assigned a few Chinese characters from “Shuowen Jiezi” for in-depth study. Group members were asked to work together to first consult the original text of “Shuowen Jiezi” or modern interpretations of the text to understand the construction of the characters, their meanings, and their applications in ancient times, and then were made to utilize online resources or library materials to explore the variations of these Chinese characters in modern Chinese as well as their examples of their applications in idioms and poems. Thorough discussion and organization of research results are required within the group. This stage emphasizes teamwork and independent inquiry, and encourages students to deepen their understanding through interactive communication. Finally, each group is required to present their research results through PPT presentations, drama performances, digital storytelling and other forms, and other groups and the teacher can ask questions and make comments to form a positive and interactive atmosphere. Teachers should give positive feedback and also point out areas that can be improved, encouraging students to think about how to apply the relevant knowledge of “Shuowen Jiezi” to their daily learning and life.
The investigation of the current situation of teaching Chinese characters in secondary schools is mainly carried out from the students’ perspective, and the questionnaire is used to explore the problems and reasons surrounding the students’ learning of Chinese characters. Through the investigation of students, we can fully understand the problems existing in the teaching of Chinese characters in the current language, and then try to put forward effective measures to solve the problems and provide new ideas for front-line teaching.
In the establishment of the survey object, a city experimental middle school was selected as the survey site. From the seven, eight and nine grades each year, three teaching classes were taken as a survey sample. In which each class was randomly selected 25 people were issued a questionnaire, a total of 225 people were taken as the survey sample, and students were organized to fill out the questionnaire carefully. A total of 180 questionnaires were distributed, 208 questionnaires were retrieved, with a recovery rate of 92.4%, and 206 valid questionnaires were sorted and counted.
The questionnaires were designed around the original meaning of Chinese characters, the theory of configuration and the culture of Chinese characters, and were designed in two dimensions: students’ knowledge of “Shuowen Jiezi” and the difficulties encountered by students in learning Chinese characters. Four options were set for each question, of which the fourth option was open-ended, not limiting the students’ thinking and leaving them to fill in the questionnaire by themselves, which reflected the current situation of front-line teaching more realistically.
Survey on Awareness of “Shuowen Jiezi”
Knowledge level of “Shuowen Jiezi” A survey of students’ knowledge of the “Shuowen Jiezi” will provide a comprehensive picture of their level of understanding and thus measure the foundation of their learning. Figure 1 shows the statistical results of students’ understanding of Shuowen Jie Zi, and the four options are numbered A1~A4 respectively: “I have read and can use it”, “I have understood but have not read the original work”, “I have occasionally heard it mentioned by others”, and “I have not heard it clearly”. As can be seen from Figure 1, most students still know something about “Shuowen Jiezi”, and the proportion of students who have read it and can use it are 23.3% and 34.47% respectively, the two together account for more than half of the students. The proportion of students who have occasionally heard it mentioned is 32.04%, and the proportion of students who have never heard of it and are not sure is 10.19%. Taken together, the combined percentage of students who did not know “Shuowen Jiezi” was 42.23%, and more than half of the students still had some knowledge of “Shuowen Jiezi”.
Students’ understanding of Shuowen Jiezi
It also shows that the students are with the foundation of learning and application, and if they are guided by the method, it can be made to better serve the students’ learning and help them to learn the words.
Investigation on “Shuowen Jiezi” can solve the problem The problems that students think Shuowen Jiezi can solve are shown in Figure 2. The four options of “tracing back to the source and clarifying the original meaning”, “deconstructing the font and clarifying the distinction”, “learning the culture of words and words” and “other” are numbered B1~B4 respectively. As can be seen from Figure 2, 54.37% of the students thought that “Shuowen Jiezi” could help them trace the origin and clarify the original meaning of words and better explain the words. This also shows that more than half of the students have big problems in understanding the meaning of words and need to pay more attention to this in teaching. 22.82% of the students thought that problems in writing could be solved by analyzing the structure of Chinese characters, clarifying the differences between similar and similar characters, and reducing the occurrence of misspelled words. 20.87% of the students thought that they could learn the culture of Chinese characters, understand ancient civilization and inherit Chinese culture. This shows that a few students with a good foundation would like to be instructed at a higher level of Chinese character culture. There are also students who put forward a different view on this issue, believing that it can solve other problems in their learning, such as the lack of understanding of word meanings and unclear sentence meanings, which are still at the core of the obstacles in meaning comprehension.
Problems that students think Shuowen Jiezi can solve
In general, students have big problems in understanding the meaning of words and other aspects, and they also hope that these problems can be solved through “Shuowen Jiezi”.
Survey on the difficulties encountered by students in learning Chinese characters By investigating the difficulties encountered by students in word learning and understanding the most important problems that students need to solve in learning, it can help teachers to select effective teaching methods and target the problems that students have. As shown in Figure 3, the four options of “unable to understand the meaning of words”, “unable to recognize usage”, “unable to recognize glyphs” and “others” are numbered as C1~C4 respectively. As can be seen from Figure 3, when learning Chinese characters, 44.17% of the students had greater problems in understanding the meanings of the words, 33.01% had greater comprehension barriers in the usage of the words, while 21.84% of the students had problems in recognizing the shapes of the words and distinguishing between similar and dissimilar characters, and 0.98% of the students had reading barriers in other areas. Taken together, most of the students had greater barriers to comprehending the meanings of words when they were learning Chinese characters.
Statistical results of students’ word learning difficulties
Therefore, when teaching, teachers should give priority to sorting out the meaning of the words, combining the “Shuowen Jiezi” explanation of the original meaning of the words, and actively exploring various ways to help students understand the meaning of the words.
The statistical results of the specific learning difficulties faced by students are shown in Figure 4. The four options of “cannot be understood in connection with the original meaning of words”, “cannot be accurately selected in multiple meanings”, “cannot be understood in context”, and “others” are numbered as D1~D4 respectively. As can be seen from Figure 4, 39.32% of the students faced the main problem in understanding the words was that they could not accurately choose the correct interpretation among multiple word meanings.30.1% of the students, on the other hand, were unable to relate the original meanings of the words to understand the meaning, which required us to use “Shuowen Jiezi” to sort out the original meanings of the Chinese characters and deepen the students’ understanding of the meanings of the words.25.24% of the students, on the other hand, due to the failure to incorporate the specific linguistic context of the text, were not able to accurately understand the exact meaning of the characters in connection with the context. Another 5.34% of the students had problems in other aspects, such as not being able to understand the phenomenon of multiple meanings of words, not being able to accurately analyze the meanings of words and so on. The root cause of students’ inability to choose the correct explanation and understand the exact meaning of the words in context is that they cannot understand the original meaning of the words accurately, which requires teachers to strengthen the explanation of the original meaning of the words in teaching and differentiate between the original meaning, the derived meaning and other different meanings, so as to facilitate the students’ analysis and application.
Statistical results of specific learning difficulties faced by students
The purpose of this comparative teaching is to compare the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” with the traditional method of teaching Chinese characters by setting up parallel classes for teaching Chinese characters to carry out comparative experiments. The purpose of the study is divided into the following two points:
First, whether the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” can better help students acquire Chinese characters.
Second, whether the pedagogy of “Shuowen Jiezi” incorporating multimedia technology achieves better results.
The subjects of this experimental study were eighth grade students in the city’s experimental middle school. The number, age, and achievement base of the experimental subjects tended to be the same out of consideration for rigor and accuracy of the results. The experimental group used the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” to teach Chinese characters; the control group used the traditional Chinese character teaching method to teach Chinese characters. The total number of students in the experiment was 120, and the students were divided into three groups of 40 each. Among them, the experimental group was divided into two groups, experimental group A was taught using the teaching method of “Shuowen Jiezi” integrating multimedia technology, and experimental group B was taught using the teaching method of “Shuowen Jiezi” in the traditional education mode. The control group was one group, which was taught by the traditional Chinese character teaching method under the traditional education mode.
The pre-test is a quiz conducted before the start of the experimental teaching. The test questions are divided into four categories: character recognition, character fill in the blank, character explanation and character expansion. Based on the results of the pretest paper recycling, the statistics of the number of students in the experimental group and the control group who got each question correct and the percentage of correctness are shown in Table 2. As can be seen from Table 2, there is not much difference between the values of the correct rate of Chinese characters in the pre-test of the experimental group students and the control group students, which are both about 25%. Therefore, the two groups of students were very close to each other in terms of Chinese character foundation before the teaching experiment, and the choice of experimental subjects was reasonable.
Pre-test situation
| Memorize word | Fill in the blank | Word interpretation | Word extension | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimental group | 22 | 27.5% | 18 | 22.5% | 19 | 23.75% | 23 | 28.75% |
| Control group | 10 | 25% | 9 | 22.5% | 11 | 27.5% | 11 | 27.5% |
In order to investigate the effectiveness of the application of the pedagogy based on “Shuowen Jiezi”, the results of the experimental group B and the control group were compared and analyzed. The immediate post-test was a follow-up test conducted immediately after the first day of experimental teaching. Based on the results of the immediate post-test paper recycling, the statistics of the number of students in the two groups who got each question correct and the percentage of correctness are shown in Table 3. Therefore, the testing stage was at the time when students remembered the Chinese characters they had learned the most, and the correct rate of the quiz was higher in the experimental group B and the control group. Comprehensive comparative analysis shows that the correct rate of the experimental group is slightly higher than that of the control group.
Real-time post-test situation
| Memorize word | Fill in the blank | Word interpretation | Word extension | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimental group B | 26 | 65% | 34 | 85% | 29 | 72.5% | 38 | 95% |
| Control group | 22 | 55% | 25 | 62.5% | 27 | 67.5% | 23 | 57.5% |
In the first question “Character Recognition”, the number of correct students in the experimental group B and the control group were 10 and 8 respectively, and the number of correct students in the two groups were close to each other, 65% and 55% respectively.
In the second question, “Word Fill in the Blanks”, there was a difference in the immediate post-test results between experimental group B and the control group. The correct rate of experimental group B was 85% (34 students), while the correct rate of the control group was 62.5% (25 students). It can be seen that the students in experimental group B have a better grasp of the connections between the shapes and meanings of the Chinese characters, while the students in the control group have a lower grasp of the connections between the shapes and meanings of the Chinese characters than those in the experimental group. Therefore, the use of the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” is more conducive to helping students acquire the meaning of Chinese characters and understand the close connection between their shapes and meanings.
In the third question “Explanation of Characters”, the correct rate of experimental group B was 72.5% (29 students), while the correct rate of the control group was 67.5% (27 students), which was higher than that of the control group. The teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” enhances the ability of applying words in context through the correlation between word shapes and meanings, which makes the students’ performance in “Word Explanation” better than that of the control group.
In the fourth question, “Word Expansion”, there is a big difference between the immediate post-test results of the experimental group B and the control group. The correct rate of the experimental group was 95% (38 students), while the correct rate of the control group was only 57.5% (23 students). This shows that the students in experimental group B were more capable of expanding the words and phrases of Chinese characters, and the students in the control group were less capable of expanding the words and phrases of Chinese characters than the experimental group. Therefore, using the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” teaching by exploring the origin of the characters is more conducive to students’ acquisition of Chinese characters.
The delayed posttest is a quiz administered one week after the end of classroom instruction. Based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting law, the correct rate of each question in the delayed posttest was low. Based on the results of the delayed post-test paper recycling, the statistics of the number of correct students and the correct rate of each question in the two groups are shown in Table 4. In the first question “Shuowen Jiezi”, the correct rate of the experimental group B and the control group were not too high, which were 32.5% and 30%, respectively, so both the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” and the traditional method of teaching Chinese characters have poor retention of the memory of the sounds of Chinese characters. In the second question, “Fill in the blanks with words”, there is still a big difference between the immediate post-test results of the experimental group and the control group. The correct rate of experimental group B was 70% (28 participants), while the correct rate of the control group was 42.5% (17 participants). This shows that the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” is more conducive to helping students’ memory retention of the meaning of Chinese characters. In the third question “Shuowen Jiezi”, the correct rate of experimental group B was 52.5% (21 students), which was higher than that of the control group, which was 45% (18 students), so the teaching method based on Shuowen Jiezi is favorable to help students’ memory retention of the associations of Chinese character shapes and meanings. In the fourth question, “Expanding the vocabulary”, the correct rates of the delayed posttests of the experimental group B and the control group were lower, both below 50%. This shows that the teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi” and the traditional teaching of Chinese characters still need to be solved for the memory retention of word-phrase articulation of Chinese characters.
Delay post-test situation
| Memorize word | Fill in the blank | Word interpretation | Word extension | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimental group B | 13 | 32.5% | 28 | 70% | 21 | 52.5% | 17 | 42.5% |
| Control group | 12 | 30% | 17 | 42.5% | 18 | 45% | 15 | 37.5% |
Comparison of the teaching situation of experimental group A and experimental group B is shown in Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8. Among them, Tables 5 and 6 are the test results of experimental group A and experimental group B respectively one day after the completion of lectures, Table 7 is the result of the follow-up test of experimental group A using the same paper one week after the completion of lectures, and Table 8 is the result of the follow-up test of experimental group B using the same paper one week after the completion of lectures, and the test is full of 100 marks.
Test results of experimental group A after one day of teaching
| Score range | Level | Number of people | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 70 points | A | 29 | 72.5% |
| 70 to 90 points | B | 9 | 22.5% |
| More than 90 points | C | 2 | 5% |
Test results of experimental group B after teaching for one day
| Score range | Level | Number of people | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 70 points | A | 12 | 30% |
| 70 to 90 points | B | 21 | 52.5% |
| More than 90 points | C | 7 | 17.5% |
Test results of experimental group A after one week of teaching
| Score range | Level | Number of people | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 70 points | A | 23 | 57.5% |
| 70 to 90 points | B | 15 | 37.5% |
| More than 90 points | C | 2 | 5% |
Test results of experimental group B after one week of teaching
| Score range | Level | Number of people | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 70 points | A | 7 | 17.5% |
| 70 to 90 points | B | 20 | 50% |
| More than 90 points | C | 13 | 32.5% |
Analyzed in combination with Tables 5 and 6, by comparing the test scores of experimental groups A and B on one day of lectures horizontally, it can be concluded that experimental group A, which adopts multimedia-assisted teaching, has the largest number of class A, accounting for 72.5% of all the participants in the quiz, while experimental group B, which adopts the traditional teaching mode of instruction, has the largest number of class B, accounting for 52.5% of all the participants in the quiz.
Combined with Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8, the test scores of both experimental group A and experimental group B decreased compared with the previous ones due to the influence of the law of memory and forgetting. By comparing the test scores of experimental group A and experimental group B before and after vertically respectively, it can be concluded that the number of people whose test scores in experimental group A with multimedia-assisted teaching are A class remains the most, accounting for 57.5%, and the number of C class remains unchanged. And the experimental group B taught with traditional teaching mode still has the most number of people in category B, and the number of people in category C increases, up 15 percentage points.
Through the horizontal and vertical comparison can be found, the experimental group A using multimedia-assisted teaching after the teaching, test scores exceeded the experimental group B, and the forgetting rate is lower; while the basis and experimental group A consistent experimental group B results not only lagged behind the experimental group A, and the rate of forgetting exceeded the experimental group A. It can be seen that the use of multimedia-assisted teaching can not only improve the effect of the pedagogical method of “Shuowen Jiezi”, but also be able to effectively reduce the forgetting rate of students’ learning.
At the end of the experiment, a survey was conducted on the students’ current teaching mode and degree of satisfaction in accepting the teaching of Chinese characters, and the results are shown in Fig. 5. As can be seen from Fig. 5, the number of students in the experimental group B and the control group who were satisfied with the traditional teaching mode of blackboard and textbook was 21, with a satisfaction rate of 26.25%, while the number of students in the experimental group A who were satisfied with the teaching mode of multimedia-assisted teaching was 33, with a satisfaction rate of 82.5%. It can be inferred that the teaching mode of integrating multimedia technology into the teaching of Chinese characters is more acceptable to the majority of Chinese character learners.
Student satisfaction survey
This paper investigates a teaching method based on “Shuowen Jiezi”, and after investigating the current status of the application of “Shuowen Jiezi” in the teaching of Chinese characters, a teaching experiment is designed to validate its effect.
Survey on the current status of application. Comprehensive questionnaire data, more than half of the students have a certain understanding of “Shuowen Jiezi”, 54.37% of the students think that “Shuowen Jiezi” can be enough to help them solve the problems in the understanding of the words. 44.17% of the students have big problems in understanding the meaning of the words, and the main problem faced by 39.32% of the students in the understanding of the words is that they can not accurately choose the correct solution among multiple word meanings. The application effect of teaching methods based on “Shuowen JieZi”. In the immediate post-test of the teaching experiment, the correct rates of “word recognition”, “word fill-in-the-blank”, “word explanation” and “word expansion” in experimental group B were 65%, 85%, 72.5% and 95%, respectively, and the correct rates in the control group were 55%, 62.5%, 67.5% and 57.5%, respectively. The use of the pedagogical method based on “Shuowen Jie Zi” to start from the exploration of the origin of words is more conducive to the acquisition of Chinese characters by students. In the delayed post-test session, the accuracy of experimental group B decreased by 32.5%, 15%, 20%, and 47.5%, respectively, and the accuracy rate of the control group decreased by 25%, 20%, 22.5%, and 20%, respectively. The necessity of multimedia-assisted teaching. Horizontally comparing the test scores of experimental groups A and B on one day of instruction, the number of people with class A in experimental group A accounted for 72.5%, and class B in experimental group B accounted for 52.5%. Vertically comparing the test scores of experimental group A and experimental group B before and after respectively, the number of people with test scores of class A in experimental group A using multimedia-assisted teaching is still the largest, accounting for 57.5%, and the number of people in class C remains unchanged. While the largest number of experimental group B, which was taught using the traditional teaching mode, still had the largest number of people in category B, and the number of people in category C increased, rising by 15 percentage points. The number of people in experimental group B and control group who were satisfied with the traditional teaching mode of blackboard board with textbook was 21, and the satisfaction rate was 26.25%. The number of people who expressed satisfaction with the teaching mode of multimedia-assisted teaching in the experimental group A was 33 with a satisfaction rate of 82.5%. It can be inferred that the teaching mode of integrating multimedia technology into the teaching of Chinese characters is more acceptable to the majority of Chinese character learners.