An Experimental Study On The Application Of Phonics In English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary Schools

Vocabulary is a fundamental part in English learning. English is an alphabetic language system, and there are internal relations between sounds and forms. However,many teachers in primary schools adopt the traditional teaching method in which students mainly memorize vocabulary through imitations and mechanical training,without sufficient attention to cultivating students' phonological awareness to reduce their vocabulary learning difficulty. In consequence, students cannot read the words out accurately and also find it difficult to memorize them, which leads to their difficulties and low interests in English study.Phonics presents the correspondence between letters or monograms and their sounds. Abundant studies abroad have proved that phonics can help young learners to pronounce, spell and read effectively. However, in China we have less empirical research and theoretical framework in this field. Based on this situation, this study attempts to apply phonics method in primary school English teaching so as to let the students preliminarily know the relations between letters and their sounds, help them to learn the vocabulary regularly and promote their interests in English learning. This study aims to answer the following questions: 1. Can phonics teaching improve primary school students' vocabulary spelling ability effectively? 2. Can phonics teaching improve primary school students' vocabulary reading ability effectively? 3.Can phonics teaching increase primary school students' interests in vocabulary learning?The participants in this study were 77 Grade 3 students in a primary school in Haizhu District of Guangzhou, who were divided into the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group received phonics instruction and the control group learned vocabulary in a traditional way. The experiment lasted 18 weeks. The experimental group was taught, in phonics method, 26 letters and relevant words,consonant letters and relevant words and vowel letters and relevant words.The experimental procedures include pre-tests, phonics teaching, post-tests, questionnaire survey and an interview. Independent-Samples T-test was used to analyze the resultsof the tests.The results show that: 1) There was significant difference between the control group and the experimental group. Specifically, the performances of the experimental group outperformed the control group in word spelling and word reading tests;2) The experimental group's interests in English vocabulary learning are much higher than students in the control group. Therefore, this study concludes that phonics is significantly effective in primary English vocabulary teaching.