A Study On The Correlation Between Phonics And English Reading Ability Of Chinese Children

As early as 1790 s, phonics was originated in American reading instruction. It was not until 1960 s that phonics drew great attention of researchers in western countries. In the end of 1990 s, instead of the whole language teaching method, phonics became popular in the language teaching field. In the following years, the discussions on two kinds of teaching methods were without intermission. However the relationship between phonics and word decoding or encoding or reading was usually tested and these studies were mainly conducted among native young children, and only a few of them were conducted among Chinese children who treat English as a second language. This research attempts to study three aspects of Chinese primary school children in the field of phonics and reading ability: firstly, the correlation between phonics and reading ability; secondly, the English reading ability and the effect of phonetic abilities on English literacy reading competence and the proper sequence of phonics development which is based on the correlation between the phonetic abilities in three phases for Chinese children; thirdly, the developmental features of phonics of Chinese children.Subjects of this study are 86 primary school students from grade 2 of the primary school attached to the First Middle School in Economic and Technological Development Zone in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. During 10 months of this study in phonics teaching, the phonetic abilities were tested by three Dates of each phase in the whole phonics learning period for Chinese children. The Date 1 contains the tests of letter knowledge, rhyme awareness and word reading; Date 2 contains the tests of letter knowledge of consonant sounds, rhyme awareness, phoneme awareness and word reading; Date 3 contains letter knowledge of vowel sounds, rhyme awareness, phoneme awareness, syllable awareness and regular or irregular word recognition and word reading. Thus, corresponding conclusions got through data analysis. Findings from this empirical investigation are as follows: first, there is reciprocally predictive relationship between phonics and reading ability. The development of phonics ability among Chinese children follows the general developmental trend of it in English-speaking countries, that it to say, it develops from simple level to complicated one, letter sound knowledge to phoneme analysis, for example. The order of phonics study is from letter recognition, also called letter name, letter sound knowledge, letter combination, rhyme awareness, phoneme awareness to phoneme analysis. However, the research on phonics of Chinese children found its special way, that is, there is reciprocally predictive relationship between the phoneme awareness of pinyin and English phonics. Chinese children’s phoneme analysis and phoneme awareness develop at the same time, which are prior to the development of word decoding, and they have a positive correlation with the letter recognition and reading ability. Theoretically, the findings have confirmed that phonics conduces to the development of phonological awareness, phoneme awareness, word-decoding, and reading ability for English beginners.