Research On The Practice Of Phonics In Primary School English Teaching

With the rapid development of our world, there is an urgent need to learn English for people living in this global village. Seeing the importance of English, the Ministry of Education in China lowered the age as to when students should begin learning English and required primary schools to include English as a compulsory subject starting at Grade 3 in 2001. But there are many problems in primary school English teaching. Most students encounter great difficulty in spelling, reading and memorizing English words. The division of sound, form and meaning is a problem in current English teaching of primary school. Phonics which was originated in American reading instruction in 1790s has been introduced to our country and has been used all over the country in recent years, mostly in private training institutions. Phonics is considered to be the fastest, the easiest and most effective way to teach students how to read English, especially for primary school students. However, the relevant theoretical framework and empirical research are very few, only confined to individual academics and private training institutions. Therefore, the theory of phonics is to be studied.On the basis of the appropriate theories and the study of the existing achievements, the author will make a further research on the practice of phonics in primary school English teaching for the purpose of enriching the theory of phonics and finding out its feasibility and effectiveness in our country, especially in primary school English teaching. It will not only enrich the theory of English teaching, but also make direct reference to English teaching practice.This thesis firstly analyzes the current situation and existing problems in primary school English teaching and introduces the research purpose and significance. Secondly, an overview of phonics is given. The concepts of phonics and the nature of English orthography are stated. The history of phonics, approaches to phonics instruction and studies concerning phonics abroad and at home are reviewed, and the principles for phonics instruction and the role of phonics in English learning are presented. Thirdly, a comparison between phonics and the IPA (The International Phonetic Alphabet) is made and the relative theories of phonics are explored. Finally, a research is conducted to explore the effectiveness of phonics in primary school English teaching. The participants were 40 primary school students from South Guanzhang Primary School, which lies in Jiyuan City, Henan Province. They were divided into two groups. Each group consisted of 20 students. Group 1 belonged to the experimental group and Group 2 was the control group. The experimental group received phonics instruction and the control group learned all the IPA symbols. Both the two groups were instructed by the author. The research was from7th, July to 15th, August in 2010 (no weekends). They all had 2 periods of English classes (50 minutes per period) every day. Three types of instruments were employed. A test contained five parts was adopted to check students'mastery of the knowledge of the 44 sounds in English, their knowledge of the commonly used phonograms, their phonemic awareness, and their spelling and reading abilities respectively. Class observation was used to observe the performance of the students in the classroom and interview was adopted to see students'attitude towards the two teaching methods. In order to collect the data for further analysis and find out the result, Independent-Sample T-Test was adopted to analyze the data collected from the results of the tests.The results showed that 1) there was significant difference between the control group and the experimental group. The scores of the experimental group were much higher than those of the control group; 2) the performances of the experimental group students in terms of their mastery of the knowledge of the 44 sounds in English, their knowledge of the commonly used phonograms, their phonemic awareness and their spelling and reading abilities were all better than those of the control group; 3) the students showed more positive attitude after phonics instruction but more negative attitude after the IPA instruction.