This article aimed to assess the impact of stroke order on Chinese spelling among Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners in Vietnam, using a cross-sectional design and an error analysis. It seeked to distinguish between sequence errors and traditional form errors in Chinese spelling and explored their relationship. The study involved 94 CSL students from four Vietnamese universities who participated in a writing-to-dictation test, a stroke identification task and a character orthographic awareness task in Chinese. Eight types of sequence errors were identified, most of which occurred within the basic orthographic units for Chinese spelling, namely the logographeme or the radical. The results of the generalized linear mixed model indicated that character frequency, stroke identification scores, orthography awareness scores and Chinese proficiency all had a significant impact on the spelling accuracy of CSL learners. In addition, a significant negative association was found between sequence accuracy and form errors. A one-way analysis of variance further revealed that the sequence error across orthographic units was an indicator of learners’ Chinese level. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of stroke order on Chinese spelling and highlight the importance of considering not only stroke-related knowledge but also orthographic units of varying grain sizes in stroke order writing. Drawing from the empirical findings, the article explored possible educational implications of stroke order in the teaching of spelling to CSL learners.
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