| Communication is the main function of language, and the main means of communicationfor a language are its spoken form and written form. English learners need to improve boththeir written English and their oral English for the purpose of all-round communication. ForEnglish learners, respectively, pronunciation and spelling of words is the core and foundationfor the spoken form and the written form of English, thus correct pronunciation and spellingof words are the requirements for the expression of thoughts and the comprehension ofinformation. The methods and quality of English teaching have been improved a lot, but thereare still obvious defects in teaching methods for both written and spoken English. Therefore,programs that take both spoken and written English into consideration can be more helpful forstudents.Phonics is popular in English native speaking countries such as the UK and the USA,and it is mainly being used to help native speakers improve their written language. Phonicspresents the letter-sound relationships of English words, so it has the potential to improvelearner’s both written and spoken English. English words do not demonstrate one-to-oneletter-sound correspondence, and the rules of phonics do not work for all the words. Therefore,for nonnative speakers, it is insufficient to be taught phonics alone. Besides, if phonics istaught alone for nonnative speakers, it will become so abstract that learners may get confusedon memorizing the sounds, especially for similar sounds. IPA symbols have been used forteaching pronunciation for a long time in China. For nonnative speakers, IPA symbols areproved to be effective on promoting phonemic awareness and accuracy of pronunciation.However, spelling and pronunciations of words may separated if students rely too much onIPA symbols for pronunciation learning, which causes trouble on vocabulary memorizationand is harmful for students’confidence and enthusiasm. When phonics is combined with IPA,their disadvantages will be made up. This research aims to design a program which combinesphonics and IPA and makes them more effective than being taught separately by mutuallypromoting each other.The program designed in this research took an overall consideration of features of thetargets, rules of phonics and IPA, and built its principles and contents accordingly. Comparedwith traditional phonics instruction, this program is more systematic and more logically organized. The content of it is also richer. It contains not only the rules for monosyllabicwords but also those for polysyllabic ones, and its classification of rules is more clear-cut.Compared with traditional instruction of IPA, all the symbols in this program are taught incontexts of words. Students can directly write out IPA transcriptions for words or read IPAtranscriptions for irregular or too difficult words through lots of exercises, so students canreach a high proficiency on applying IPAsymbols.To present this program, a textbook was written. The textbook and the teaching methodsit borrowed are organized based on ADDIE model after the contents and the ordering of themwere conformed. The teaching contents were divided into lessons in this textbook and thecontents for each lesson were well organized and designed with the same structure. Afterthe textbook was composed, rudimental applications for this program was carried out. Thisprogram was tutored for two primary students and four junior high school students. After theprogram was instructed, students obtained the ability to sound out words according to theirspellings and reached high proficiency on applying IPA symbols. These rudimentalapplications preliminarily approved that this program is feasible and effective. |
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