Exploring the pretraining effect in learning classical Chinese reading skills

Reading Chinese classical texts is very challenging, even for native speakers of Chinese. This study investigated the pretraining effect (established in cognitive theory of multimedia learning and cognitive load theory) in reading classical Chinese texts by young learners of Chinese as the first language. A 3 × 2 factorial design was adopted with pretraining activities modes (thematic pretraining, linguistic pretraining, and no pretraining) and levels of expertise (two levels of relative proficiency in classical Chinese reading comprehension) as independent variables and with reading comprehension performance and cognitive load ratings as dependent variables. 129 Year-6 (less proficient) students and 151 Year-8 (more proficient) students were randomly allocated to three instructional conditions. It was found that the more proficient Chinese learners in the two pretraining groups outperformed the more proficient learners in the no pretraining group, and the thematic pretraining condition led to better learning outcomes and lower cognitive load ratings than the linguistic pretraining condition. For the less proficient participants, the thematic pretraining condition had lower cognitive load ratings and better learning outcomes than no pretraining conditions. The results were discussed from the perspective of cognitive load theory.