G-IM: An Input Method of Chinese Characters for Character Amnesia Prevention

Character amnesia is a recent phenomenon in which native Chinese or Japanese speakers forget how to write Chinese characters (Kanji in Japanese), but maintain the ability to read them. It is generally believed that the constant use of computers and mobile phones equipped with pronunciation-based Chinese-character input systems is to blame. Therefore, particularly in China, several element-based input methods that require users to input radicals of the Chinese characters have been developed. However, these methods are not effective for learning how to write unfamiliar characters. This paper proposes a novel pronunciation-based input method called G-IM. Unlike conventional methods, G- IM sometimes outputs incorrect character shapes, which forces users to pay close attention to the character shapes and thus strengthens retention and recall. Through user studies, we confirmed that G-IM significantly strengthens the retention and recall of character shapes as compared to conventional input methods and writing by hand.