The Application Of Phonics In English Vocabulary Teaching For Primary School Students

Vocabulary teaching is a key part of English teaching in primary schools.Vocabulary is the foundation of English learning.Without vocabulary,students can not learn English well.According to the English curriculum standards for compulsory education(2011 Edition),students should achieve the secondary goal by the end of the sixth grade,which means they should master 600-700 words.Therefore,vocabulary teaching is very important in primary school.However,in the traditional English class,teachers impart vocabulary knowledge to students mechanically,which makes students feel very bored and bring about lots of problems such as mechanical memorization,spelling difficulty.In view of this phenomenon,the author attempted to apply phonics in English vocabulary teaching in primary school,expecting that the students’ learning interest and phonological awareness will be improved by the correspondence of “sound” and “form”.In this way,students can read words when seeing words and write down the words when listening to the sounds,thus students can learn English vocabulary efficiently.Based on the theory of learning transfer and constructivism,this study aims to solve the following research questions: 1.Can phonics enhance students’ phonological awareness? 2.Can phonics stimulate primary school students’ interest in English vocabulary learning? 3.What is the influence of phonics on pupils’ spelling ability?The research objects of this study are the students of Class 7 and Class 8,Grade 5.There were 48 students in each class.Class 8 of Grade 5 was the experimental class,and Class 7 of Grade 5 was the control class.The teaching experiment lasted for 16 weeks.Before the experiment,the author conducted a questionnaire survey for the students in the experimental class and control class and an interview for the students in the experimental class to know the students’ attitudes towards English vocabulary learning.In order to know whether there were significant differences in phonological awareness,spelling ability between the experimental class and the control class or not,the two classes were tested by a pre-test before the experiment.During the teaching experiment,the experimental class was taught phonics for 16 weeks.In the control class,the teacher still used the traditional teaching method.After the experiment,the experimental class and control class were tested by a post-test.Questionnaires and interviews were conducted for the students in the experimental class.By comparing the data of the pre-test and the post-test,this study tries to find out whether the students’ interest in vocabulary learning,phonological awareness and spelling ability improved or not.The data was collected for analysis.The data of the pre-test and the post-test shows that the test scores of the students in the experimental class improved significantly in the phonological test and spelling test after 16-week phonics teaching.By comparing the results of questionnaire and interview,the study finds out that students in the experimental class obviously improved the interest in vocabulary learning and they learned English more actively,which implies that phonics can enhance students’ phonological awareness,stimulate primary school students’ interest in learning English vocabulary and improve pupils’ spelling ability.The teaching procedure of phonics is comparatively hasty because of limited time,in that case there are still some shortcomings in this study.But on the whole,this study applies phonics in primary school English vocabulary teaching,which achieves the expected goals and provides suggestions and references for future English teaching reform.