A Study On Chinese Non-english Majors’ English Phonological Awareness And Their English Spelling Ability

Phonological awareness is the ability to analyze spoken or written language into its component sounds and to manipulate these smaller units. Phonological awareness is not a single skill, but includes different levels of phonological awareness based on phonological units such as phoneme, syllable, and rhyme. Since every language has its own unique phonological features, phonological awareness could be used to mean differently. For instance, phonological awareness in Mandarin involves syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness and tone awareness while English phonological awareness mainly includes syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness, and phoneme awareness. Based on different phonology, the acquisition of English word spelling is difficult for Chinese college students learning English as a foreign language.Literature review related to phonological awareness shows that phonological awareness has a significant effect on word spelling of students. However, early foreign and domestic research focused primarily on the phonological awareness of preschoolers, the primary school students, and the secondary school students. In fact, college students are also an important group of English learners in China, but few studies seem to be aware of the significance of studying English phonological awareness of college students. As it has been acknowledged, there are many differences between adults and children in brain development, cognitive ability, learning environment, and social psychological factors. College students as adults are supposed to have the uniqueness in their development of English phonological awareness. The theories on English phonological awareness of young children established in the existent research obviously may not be totally applicable into reasoning out the characteristics of English phonological awareness of college students. Understandably, more studies are required to examine college students’ phonological awareness.The present study, therefore, chose non-English majors as the majority of Chinese English language learners to study, intending to explore English phonological awareness of college students. Three questions are raised to address the issue:(1) What are the current situations of Chinese Non-English majors’ English phonological awareness?(2) What are the features of Chinese Non-English majors’ English word spelling ability?(3) Is there a correlation between Chinese Non-English majors’ English phonological awareness and their English word spelling performance? To answer these three questions effectively, the present study selected 90 non-English majors in Lanzhou Jiaotong University as subjects to participate in the English phonological awareness tests and English word spelling tests. The comprehensive test of phonological processing(CTOPP-2)(Wagner et al, 1999) is used as measurement of English phonological awareness because of its popularity and wide spread usage and the Elementary Spelling Inventory(ESI)(Words Their Way, 2008) as the testing instrument for subjects’ English spelling ability.Analysis of data obtained in English phonological awareness test indicated that most non-English majors exhibited a very poor phonological awareness, especially syllable awareness. And the developmental trend of non-English majors’ English phonological awareness is contrary to the general, universal trend found for the English language. Onset-rhyme awareness emerges before phoneme awareness, followed by syllable awareness. Then, data from English word spelling test demonstrated that English word spelling ability of most non-English majors was poor. The poor performance in spelling vowel, inflected ending and unstressed syllables was notably presented. Finally, the correlation analyses revealed that non-English majors’ English phonological awareness was significantly correlated with their English word spelling ability.These findings have brought some implications for the English language teaching and learning. Firstly, most college students are lack of phonological awareness training, which contributes a lot to their poor English phonological awareness. The poor phonological awareness in turn has a negative influence on their performance in English reading and spelling. Therefore, from the perspective of teaching, public college English teacher should carefully incorporate phonological awareness training programs into their teaching, which aims at improving non-English Majors’ English phonological awareness at syllable level, onset-rhyme level, and phoneme level. Secondly, the increase in English learners’ English phonological awareness may help them improve their English word spelling ability. The present study has demonstrated that the weakness of non-English majors’ phonological awareness is syllable awareness. Hence, in terms of findings made in the present study and differences between English and Chinese phonology, well-controlled intervention may be conducted to target at the weakness of non-English majors’ phonological awareness in order to help them to overcome spelling difficulties.