Diane ends her three part explanation with this:
Approaches to teaching reading in Chinese:
Different teachers have different approaches related to using pinyin and characters. In the CI world, I know of three. (It seems that all of them work in the long run, though I have a preference for cold character reading.)
– Use only pinyin until much later (ex, Liam O’Neill’s approach – if I recall correctly, he begins them reading characters in year 3 and their reading develops quite quickly because of all the language in their heads). Students read pinyin texts until perhaps years later.
– Introduce pinyin and characters at the same time. I saw Annick Chen do this when I got to visit a beginner class. She had readings for them in pinyin, though, so it is also like Liam’s approach, too. I show pinyin and characters for new words sometimes with upper levels who seem more ready for characters earlier… but not with Chinese 1 or 2.
– Terry Waltz’s cold character reading: First show new words in pinyin only; after aural input and apparent acquisition, do reading only in characters, beginning with reading aloud and leading to more independent reading. This is what I do with Chinese 1 & 2. So, on day 3 of Chinese 1, they began to read in characters. I like it much better than what I did before, which was showing pinyin and characters right away with new words. That asks them to get both sound-meaning connected to visuals, which is too much at once for most people. The 4%ers got it but many did not, and later most struggled with reading.
Though I don’t know of any CI teachers, there are some teachers (and textbooks for sure) who have students constantly read with both characters and pinyin together. My opinion is that that often causes problems. There are issues for the alphabet-language-native brain with any time there is pinyin with characters. Any time pinyin is shown with characters, the brain naturally gravitates to letters, and only very rare Westerners – I don’t know any – can “block” that pinyin. I am not sure how many native speakers understand this issue for those of us raised in alphabetic language as I think it’s different for native Chinese speakers. My impression is that native Chinese teachers usually feel comfortable either reading characters or reading English, but this is not so interchangeable for the majority of non-native Chinese speakers. (Again, this is my opinion.) Now over 20 years after beginning to learn Chinese, I still sometimes have a first reaction to a page full of characters: my brain goes, “Nope! Not going to try that!” and I coach myself, “You like characters! You can read characters. You’re probably going to only hit very few you don’t already know. You can read that!” All that happens in a split second now, but many students stop after the initial “Nope!” brain reflex. So I believe if we want our students truly to be literate in characters, whenever it is that they read characters there should be no pinyin showing – or only rarely, on a word maybe that they haven’t acquired yet.
I also feel that cold character reading relies on the unconscious mind’s ability to acquire. It’s very exciting to see students’ progress. It’s especially exciting the first time we read together – some day I’ll get video of that. I begin reading whatever text aloud and invite students to join as they feel ready. Someone – me or a student – points to each character as it is read aloud. When the characters begin to “click” and they join in reading aloud – wowee, that’s some exciting stuff! Personally, I think it’s all about the unconscious mind. The brain “catches” the characters and begins to recognize them elsewhere. One must have the aural input very thoroughly first or this would be a nightmare. They need to go, “Oh! That how that super-familiar word looks!” which is what Chinese children do when they learn to read. With so much aural work first, our non-native students are put in nearly the same position as native Chinese children learning to read.