A Study On The Application Of Phonics In English Vocabulary Teaching Of The Primary School

Vocabulary teaching is a vital teaching task for English teachers in the primary school.According to New English Curriculum Standard(2011),students are required to reach the English ability of level 2 after six years' studying in the primary school.The objectives of level 2 cover: to know the simple spelling rules;to learn vocabulary according to its sound,meaning and form;to know about 700 words and 50 idioms well;to apply about 400 words well.As a popular teaching method in the English speaking countries,phonics is used to teach beginners reading and spelling with symbol-sound relationships.With the help of the method of phonics,many students are able to learn the word sound and spelling independently.In connection with the requirement of English word at level 2 and the theory of phonics,the thesis aims to help primary school students to master the letter-sound relationship,and then,enable them to decode the new words,which can greatly improve their ability of reading and spelling English words.The participants of the experiment are students from grade four in the public primary school.They were randomly distributed into two classes when they came to the school.One class is the controlled group(CG)with twenty students,the other class is the experimental group(EG)with twenty students.Students in the CG receive the conventional teaching method,such as teaching with pictures,chant and games,while students in the EG are taught by phonics.The experiment lasts for a semester about 18 weeks.Both quantitative and qualitative data are collected in this experiment.During the first week,there is a pre-test administrated to test the students' reading and spelling skills in two groups,and also,a questionnaire is conducted in the EG for knowing their views on vocabulary learning.Teaching contents are arranged from the second to the sixteenth week.Students in the EG receive a phonics training which involves sound of 26 letters,sound of consonant and vowels,sound of vowels in open and close syllables,general sound of letter combinations and skills of reading and spelling.After phonics teaching,there are three tests conducted to follow students' development of reading and spelling skills.During the last two weeks,a post-test is conducted both in the CG and the EG and a post-questionnaire is administrated in the EG.The results from the pre-test and the post-test are the data of independent sample t-test calculated by SPSS 22,and the data from the questionnaires is calculated to compare the students' vocabulary learning condition before and after the implementation of phonics.The research shows that students in the CG and the EG have approximate ability of word reading and spelling in the pre-test.But the reading and spelling performance of students in the EG are better than those in the CG after the application of phonics in English vocabulary teaching.And then,the results from the phonics tests indicate that students in the EG improve more in achievements of word reading and spelling than those in the CG.Furthermore,the data from the questionnaires manifests that students show more interests,confidence and independence in learning English vocabulary.Therefore,the application of phonics in English vocabulary teaching is beneficial for primary school students to improve their word reading and spelling ability.