What is Chinese orthographic learning via self-teaching? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Guided by the self-teaching hypothesis, this study examined Chinese orthographic learning through a systematic review and meta-analysis, covering 13 empirical studies with 26 independent samples ( N = 1403) from 1995 to 2024. Orthographic learning outcomes, resulting from the influence of word-internal and word-external factors (e.g., context, orthographic complexity, Zhuyin, phonetic radicals, and semantic radicals), were examined via the effect sizes of Hedges’ g . This research also explored the potential moderating effects of participants’ age, the method of phonological recoding (reading aloud vs reading silently vs reading with eye tracking), and the presentation of target characters (single-character words vs two-character words vs two-character words including two target characters vs three-character phrases vs mixed). Results revealed several key findings: (1) Chinese orthographic learning via self-teaching could be defined as a development process where learners acquire and internalize the orthographic representations of Chinese characters through independent reading, leveraging phonological recoding and sublexical semantic cues. (2) Both phonetic radicals and semantic radicals demonstrated significant effects on orthographic learning, with phonetic radicals showing a larger effect size. (3) Moderator analyses on the semantic radical effect revealed no significant moderating effects of participants’ age ( z = − 0.22, p = 0.412). However, significant moderating effects were observed for the method of phonological recoding ( z = 2.37, p = 0.018) and the presentation of target characters ( z = 2.31, p = 0.021). These findings contribute to the evaluation of paradigms for conducting Chinese self-teaching research and provide directions for future investigations.