本研究之目的係經由探討六書中的形聲、會意、象形、指事的難度層次以及其對學童認字正確性的影響；此外，更進一步將形聲字分成五個類型，加以探討此五類型的難度以及其對學童認字正確性的影響。以中文年級認字量表的常模樣本作為研究對象，包括國小一年級至國中三年級，共計3655人。並以此一量表中的字為基礎，分析學童在中文識字上的表現。所得之資料以二因子變異數分析進行資料分析，研究結果顯示對國小學童而言，年級和認字能力有顯著的關係存在，但此一關係隨著年級的增長，到國中階段便逐漸消失，此一關係已不復見。此外，在六書中四種造字原則之認字正確性與難度達顯著性差異，由難到易的順序為形聲、會意、象形、指事。本研究亦發現在形聲中五個類型的的認字正確性和難度達顯著性差異，以該字和聲旁的聲母和韻母均不相同的類型最為簡單，而以該字和聲旁的聲調、聲母和韻母均相同的類型最為困難。依據此研究之發現，教師對學生在造字原則上的發展有一初步瞭解，並可依據這些發現，進一步發展出適當的教學方法或課程，以期促進學生的識字能力發展。

This study examined whether certain categories of Chinese characters were more difficult to learn and whether the phonetic component found in some characters plays an important role for children learning to read Chinese. Participants were 3655 Chinese students from grade 1 through 9. Results indicated that there is a statistically significant relation between grade and character recognition ability at the elementary level, but not in junior high, and that some categories were significantly more difficult to recognize than others. The rank order of the character difficulty for categories, from hard to easy, was phonetic complex ＞ logical aggregates ＞ imitative drafts = indicative letters. Thus, the Chinese characters in the phonetic complex category are more difficult than the characters in the other three categories. When this category was further broken into five Subtypes, there were significant differences in recognition accuracy among these Subtypes. According to the results, students have the best accuracy of word recognition when the Chinese character with a different pronunciation than the phonetic component and have the worst accuracy of word recognition when the Chinese characters with the same pronunciation as the phonetic component.