Applying Augmented Reality to Chinese Radicals Learning: A Remedial Teaching Experiment in an Elementary School

In the regions of Chinese as the first language, children with backward Chinese characters ability are more likely to give up reading the subject content of long texts, which affects their learning in the long term. This study applies augmented reality (AR) to develop a remedial teaching model for Chinese radical recognition and assesses its effectiveness on underachieved students at an elementary school. Based on several Chinese characters that were easy for children to confuse radicals, an AR app for Android was developed and installed in tablet computers. The remedial teaching model involves students to use AR app to scan radical cards and trigger animations introducing the evolution of radicals. Students can practice Chinese character writing on the tablet computer's screen. With the multiple stimulus of AR, the teacher lead students collaboratively complete the worksheets. To assess students' learning outcomes, a quasi-experimental approach was administrated to 8 second grade students who had backward Chinese literacy, in which qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Results showed this remedial teaching model improved the disadvantaged students’ recognition accuracy on Chinese characters and flips their motivation toward Chinese characters learning. During the remedial teaching program, use of AR was effective to get students more attentions and impressions on Chinese radicals. Finally, Implications for Chinese characters teaching practices are discussed