Writing systems, the ways that orthography maps to phonology and semantics, influence word reading. In written Chinese, the character is a basic writing unit maps onto a single syllable morpheme. The morphosyllabic nature of the Chinese writing system brings some challenges to Chinese learning and Chinese teaching. Dr. Lin Chen is a research associate at Learning Research & Development Center at University of Pittsburgh will present several empirical studies of Chinese word reading for adult Chinese learners and discuss the roles of characters and words in learning Chinese and the implications for teaching Chinese.