A Study Of The Effectiveness Of English Phonological Awareness On Verbal Short-term Memory Of Junior High School Students

Phonological Awareness(PA)has been widely used in field of psychology and linguistics since it was put forward by Bruce in 1964.Many western scholars study on the relationship between PA and children’s ability of reading and spelling,and a large amount of important theories were achieved.They got the conclusion that PA and children’s ability of reading and spelling are closely related.In recent years,some scholars in China draw their attention to the relationship between PA and reading ability of students whose mother language is Chinese.They devoted a lot but should work more on the relationship between PA and vocabulary acquisition in spelling and verbal short-term memory.This thesis would mainly explore the relationship between PA and the verbal short-term memory of students in junior high school level.The study is aimed at three research questions.(1)What are the characteristics of junior high school students’ PA?(2)Does phonological awareness have an effect on improving the verbal short-term memory of students in junior high school level?(3)Which part of phonological awareness is most effective? To answer these questions,the author conducted an experiment among 64 students who are from two classes of grade eight.One class is chosen as experimental group and the other controlled group.Both experimental group and controlled group received a pretest on PA and verbal short-term memory before PA training.The result of the Independent-Samples t test showed that there is no significant difference between two groups.After the experimental group is given a six-month’s PA training,two groups of students received a posttest on PA and verbal short-term memory.The result showed that both PA and verbal short-term memory of experimental group is greatly improved,while there is no significant difference in controlled group.There are several conclusions can be drawn from the experiment.(1)Junior high school students behave best in rhyme identification for their rhyme awareness has been greatly developed before.Teachers should work more to help students improve their awareness of syllable and phoneme.(2)After PA training,the PA and verbal short-term memory are obviously improved,which means that PA has an effect on verbal short-term memory.English teacher should help students to improve their PA and verbal short-term memory,which makes their vocabulary acquisition more effective.(3)For junior high school students,to improve the syllable awareness is the most effective part of PA to improve verbal short-term memory.