| Since students turn to grade three,more English periods are arranged each week.In the mean time,more written homework is assigned after class.As students make enormous errors in spelling,their inadequacy in spelling ability attracts our attention.Students' weak ability of spelling have become an important problem that obstacles them on their way of learning English.It can not only influence their scores of tests,but also influence their confidence and interest in learning English.Hence,how to improve students' spelling ability becomes an issue that is urgent to be discussed.In the author's opinion,it needs a good method to improve students' spelling ability.And the phonics,which is popular in western countries,provides a good choice for us.Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language.It is an independent teaching system based on the correspondence relationship between symbols and their sounds.Since the turn of the 20 th century,phonics has been widely used in primary education and in teaching literacy throughout the English-speaking world.It functions in training students' phonological awareness,helping them master English spelling rules and further improving their reading abilities.By literature review,it is found that most spelling errors are associated with phonological deviation.If students' spelling errors in phonological deviation were reduced,their spelling abilities would be enhanced effectively.Therefore,the present study aims at learning the rough proportion of phonological deviation in students' spelling errors,discussing the reasons why students make spelling errors in phonological deviation,and researching whether phonics can reduce students' spelling errors in phonological deviation and further improve their spelling abilities.The present experiment mainly utilized the instructional experiment contrast method and the questionnaire method.Seventy three 3rd-graders of two classes in Shanghai Qiuzhi primary school participated in the research.One class is the experimental class,and the other is the control class.Before the experiment,the two classes were given a dictation of 20 words as the pretest in order to test their original spelling levels.Then,they did the pre-questionnaire designed to investigate students' interest,attitude,learning method toward spelling.In the instructional period,the experimental class took a period of half an hour every week to learn the phonics which was based on the textbook Anniekids Phonics: Learn to Read and its matching story books.On the contrast,the control class was given a period of half an hour's reading course every week based on the story books.After the two-month experiment,the two classes were given the same dictation again as the posttest in order to test their present spelling levels.Then,they did the post-questionnaire which was designed to investigate if there was any change in their attitudes towards spelling.Next,the results of the tests were coped through SPSS(19.0)and the results of the questionnaires were analyzed in details.The results showed that:(1)The phonological deviations take about 60% in students' spelling errors.(2)The phonological deviations are mainly caused by students' weak phonological awareness,their lack of necessary spelling rules,the negative transfer of their mother tongue,sound interaction and the neglect of the weak sound.(3)The phonics can effectively reduce 3rd-grades' spelling errors in phonological deviation and further improve their spelling abilities. |
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