One-syllable Articles as a Technique for Teaching Chinese Radicals

Chinese character comprehension is one of the biggest troubles CSL (Chinese second language learners) face when trying to learn a Chinese language.Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, a One-Syllable Article (同音文章 Tó ngyīn Wé nzhāng) from 1916, continues to see use in classrooms, but there has been a lack of attempts to refine the medium for alternative learning outcomes.The author writes two poems using /ao/ and /ou/ to show the possibility, forcing reliance on orthographic distinctions between phono-semantic compounds.The author therefore proposes their use in a technique for introducing the system of radicals within the Han script.Taking the form of a pedagogical proposal and materials development study, this paper fills a gap in radical-focused learning materials, promoting inductive, student-centred learning, with a reproducible methodology for further development.