Existing studies have revealed two dominant issues in pedagogical approaches to
teaching Chinese characters. These issues have resulted in more difficulties in learning
Chinese characters. The first issue is the dilemma of sequence order when introducing the
Chinese phonetic system of pinyin and Chinese characters. When teaching Chinese as a
foreign language, it is common practice to teach pinyin first because it is believed that
focusing on the phonetics without distracting from character orthography will build a solid
foundation for spoken language, which will further help develop awareness of the language
and skills for dealing with more challenging tasks, such as learning characters (Chen,
2005). Packard (1990) found that in comparison with students who were immediately
introduced to Chinese characters in class, students who studied pinyin for three weeks
before learning Chinese characters proved significantly better in phonetic discrimination,
unfamiliar syllable transcription, and spoken Chinese. During the early stages of learning
Chinese, making learning tasks less intimating will help students become more comfortable
with learning characters and may help lower the drop-out rate