Abstract
The present study investigated young children's concepts about Chinese character writing and drawing. Previous studies indicated that children's knowledge about their writing system increases with age. Older children seem to be more able to differentiate the function of writing and drawing. However, these findings derived from studies that compared the formats (products) or actions of writing and drawing rather than directly prompting children into using explanatory talk for why and how they create those symbols. Thus, the objective of the current study was to develop tasks to tap young Chinese children's understandings and concepts of Chinese character writing and drawing. The participants included 79 kindergarteners and 79 preschoolers from four schools in Taiwan. Children's understanding and concepts about print and drawing were collected through interviews and their character writing performance was measured by several writing tasks. The results of the study showed that 1) children could distinguish the differences of print and drawing as they increase of age; 2) children use different representations to present Chinese character and drawing, respectively, based on their literacy experience; 3) most children rely on visual form to distinguish the two notation systems, that is, pay more attention to the visual features of the Chinese character or the shape of the drawing.