Abstract
This paper aims to integrate the cognitive and social approaches of Second Language Acquisition studies. Specifically, it strives to report scaffolding practices for young Chinese-Japanese bilinguals in promoting language transfer from Chinese to Japanese based on cognitive processing for understand Japanese kanji words using their existing knowledge of Chinese. The face-to-face practices consisting of card-reading tasks were conducted in two cities: Beijing, where simplified Chinese characters are used, and Taipei, where traditional Chinese characters are used. The participants were Chinese-Japanese bilingual children who had completed two years of local grade school, and whose learning of Chinese characters preceded that of Japanese kanji. The results of 20 subjects in Beijing and 14 in Taipei suggest that the form of characters affects the childrenʼs ability to use their Chinese knowledge, and that they process kanji words based, in order, on their form, meaning, and reading while monitoring them in their context. Furthermore, it is found that scaffolding can be successful by supporting students in enhancing such cognitive processing for kanji, while that scaffolding is limited due to their level of cognitive development or the size of their Japanese speaking vocabulary.
In conclusion, based on these findings, proposals are formulated on scaffolding for learning Japanese kanji among Chinese-Japanese bilingual children with previous instruction in Chinese character-using areas.
