A Research On The Application Of Phonics To The English Phonetic Teaching In Primary School

English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education points out that phonetic teaching is one of the important contents of language teaching.Standardized pronunciation and intonation can lay a good foundation for effective oral communication.Learning pronunciation is the basis of learning English well,and solid pronunciation knowledge is the basis of communicating in English.In the process of English teaching in primary schools,with the increase of vocabulary,the requirements for students’ spelling and dictating abilities are gradually improved.If students don’t have the ability of spelling and dictating,they will lose interest and enthusiasm in English learning.Phonics is a commonly used method for English-speaking children to learn phonetic knowledge,which helps students directly learn the pronunciation rules of 26 letters and letter combinations in words and enables them to grasp the rules of spelling and dictating.Nowadays,phonics has been used in various English tutorial classes in China,but it hasn’t been used in the English classroom of public schools.Therefore,taking the students in Class 1,Grade 4 as the research subjects,the author conducted a three-month empirical study on phonetic teaching in primary school based on phonics.In this study,questionnaires,interviews and tests are used to solve the following research questions:(1)What are the teaching effects of phonics on improving students’ abilities of spelling and dictating?(2)What are the teaching effects of phonics on improving students’ interests and confidence in learning phonetic knowledge? The major findings are showed as follows:(1)According to the pre-test and post-test results,the average score of the post-spelling in the experimental class is 6.7 higher than before and the average score of the post-dictating in the experimental class is 6.3 higher than before.The results show that the application of phonics can improve students’ abilities of spelling and dictating.(2)According to the results from the questionnaires and interviews,students in the experimental class like learning phonetic knowledge much better.They would like to spend more time reviewing Sound Time section,and they have a sense of achievement after spelling and dictating a new word independently.The results show that the application of phonics can improve students’ interests and self-confidence in learning phonetic knowledge.This study provides some pedagogical implications for phonetic teaching in primary school.More importantly,this study helps students improve their abilities of spelling and dictating,so that they can grasp the correspondence between letters and sounds.