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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Cognition

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1626414

This article is part of the Research TopicRethinking the Embodiment of Language: Challenges and Future HorizonsView all 7 articles

The Cognitive Impacts of Chinese Pinyin Learning on English-Speaking Elementary Students in a Bilingual Educational Setting

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China
  • 2Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology, Haikou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study investigates the effects of limited Chinese pinyin learning on American elementary school students’ language performance, with particular emphasis on potential cross-linguistic interference and the benefits of pinyin learning. Participants from two schools, one receiving Chinese instruction including pinyin (experimental group) and one with no Chinese instruction (control group), in first and fourth grades were assessed on measures of Nonverbal Ability (NA), Phonological Awareness (PA), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4), Chinese Fluency Test (CFT), Commonly Mispronounced Chinese Words Read Aloud Test (CMCT) and Commonly Mispronounced English Words Read Aloud Test (CMET). Results indicated that the modest exposure to pinyin, delivered as five 30-minute sessions per three weeks, did not significantly interfere with the acquisition of English vocabulary, as evidenced by comparable performance on PPVT-4 and CMET across groups. In first grade, CMCT was positively correlated with NA, PA, and CMET, while in fourth grade, significant correlations were observed only with CMET and CFT. Furthermore, error analyses revealed that the majority of mis- pronunciations were attributable to intrinsic properties of the English language rather than to negative transfer from pinyin instruction. These differential patterns suggest that a developmental shift in how Chinese pinyin interacts with students’ cognitive and linguistic abilities across grade levels, the most effective period for introducing pinyin instruction appears to be around the first grade, when phonological systems are still developing, while by fourth grade, when these systems are largely consolidated, the cognitive benefits of pinyin learning become less direct, although early pinyin skills then appear to support vocabulary acquisition.

Keywords: Chinese pinyin, Second Language Acquisition, phonological awareness, cross-linguistic interference, Bilingual ElementaryLearners, Biliteracy development

Received: 10 May 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Liu and Bai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Hao Bai, hbai@alumni.purdue.edu

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