The Effects of Explicit Phonics Instruction on the Development of Phonological Awareness

• Main Authors: Wanlin Sheu, 許婉琳
• Other Authors: Chun-Yin Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ysy8jx

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === ABSTRACT The purpose of the quasi-experimental study is to evaluate the effects of explicit phonics instruction on the phonological awareness (PA) development of thirty four second graders. The major focus of the explicit phonics instruction was to explicitly arouse students’ awareness of letter-sound knowledge and PA skills, such as, blending and segmentation. Over a semester, after the students underwent the treatment for five periods (approximately 200 mins) of intensive trainings, a quantitative approach was implemented to address to the research questions proposed. The results of the present study are as follows: 1. The subjects’ overall phonological awareness skills were improved after explicit phonics instruction. In particularly, the low-achievers and the low-PA students made the most progress in the posttest. However, the instructional effect was not as obvious for the high achievers and the high-PA students. 2. The subjects improved greatly in the VC blending task and the phoneme segmentation task. 3. The subjects’ alphabetic knowledge played facilitative role in enhancing their phonological awareness skills, such as blending, phoneme segmentation, and rhyming. 4. The difficulty orders of the six phonological awareness tasks, from the easiest to the most difficult, were VC-blending < syllable segmentation & CVC-blending < rhyming < phoneme segmentation < CVC oral production. 5. The subjects’ difficulties in their PA performances might result from: letter sound and letter name confusion, wrong substitution of similar letter sounds, and the influence of multiple phonological factors. The pedagogical implications of the present study lie in that this explicit approach of phonics instruction is favorable for enhancing students’ phonological awareness ability, especially low-PA students. In addition, this approach is most likely to boost students’ two phonological awareness skills, such as, VC blending and phoneme segmentation. Furthermore, it is suggested that teachers should build up students’ alphabetic knowledge first in promoting their phonological awareness ability. They are also recommended to provide students with more minimal pairs and practices when introducing confusing sounds.