A Study Of The Correlation Between Chinese Junior EFL Learners' Phonological Awareness And Types Of Spelling Errors

The researches on phonological awareness can date back to 1960s.Bruce was the expert who first did such researches.Since then,phonological awareness attracted a lot of attention of the researchers at home and abroad.And many researchers have carried out different researches and put forward diverse hypotheses on phonological awareness.Researches on phonological awareness carried out by the experts at home and abroad mainly discussed its definition and the relationship between phonological awareness and language abilities.Researches on spelling errors mainly introduced the definition,types and reasons in different stages.No researches were carried out to explicate the specific relationship between specific phonological awareness and types of spelling errors.English as a second language learners in junior high school have much difficulty in pronouncing English words and learning words.In the light of this current situation,I try to find out the correlation between specific phonological awareness and types of spelling errors with junior high school English learners as research participants.This paper aims to answer to three questions:What is the current status of junior EFL learners' phonological awareness?Which method of words learning is the most efficient one in spelling English words correctly?What is the correlation between phonological awareness and types of spelling errors?Four questionnaires or tests were designed in the study:Two words spelling tests refer to the date of Frequency and percentage of the distributions of phoneme-grapheme correspondences in American English by position in syllables:20-vowel and 30-consonant classification collected by Paul R.Hanna et al.After analyzing the data,the results indicate that:1)Junior EFL learners have a high level of phonological awareness because most of them have got some training in phonological knowledge.2)Spelling after reading words is a better method in mastering English words.Learners' self-concept also influences their achievement in spelling words a lot.3)There is a high-degree of correlation between the phonological awareness and types of spelling errors.