An Empirical Study On The Application Of Phonics To Primary English Teaching

Phonics helps learners to read unfamiliar English words out on the basis of the sounds of alphabetic letters.It enables children to read out words at the first sight,so as to assist them to overcome the obstacles with pronunciation and word spelling,centering on the letter-sound correspondences.In China,many primary schools start English classes from the first grade,some from the third grade,a period when children know little about the English language.Only few students have previous training or learning in this field.It is a great challenge for them to master English pronunciation and spelling under such circumstances.The author hold s the opinion that the introduction of Phonics-based teaching method can make it easier for children to learn English as well as exert an active effect on their learning process of English.This thesis intends to confirm whether phonics can promote primary school students‘ spelling skills and their ability to apply English in daily life conversations by using phonics method in the teaching of second grade students of Xingguang Primary School.Being based on the cognitive development theory,and language transfer theory,this study aims to explore the role phonics teaching method plays in raising English teaching efficiency in primary schools.The research instruments are tests,teaching experiment and questionnaires in this study.The Experimental Group(55)and the Control Group(54)of the experiment subjects were children from Class Nine and Class Ten.Before the study,both classes had a pre-test to ensure that they were more or less from the same starting line in terms of phonology and spelling.Class Nine was taught with Phonics-based teaching method,while Class Ten didn‘t.After the 18-week-long experiment,students of the two classes were ordered to take part in a post-test and questionnaire.And the data of tests was analyzed by SPSS22.Here are the conclusions: Phonics teaching method can assist children to improve their phonological awareness as well as word spelling and memorization skills.Students will be able to master the English pronunciation better thanks to their increased phonetic cognition awareness result from the implementation of phonics teaching method.Children‘s learning interest is greatly raised as a result of the phonics teaching.The author has put forward some suggestions on English teaching in primary schools in the future on the basis of the findings of this study.Besides,the author hopes that phonics teaching method could be accepted more widely and professionally around China,which will definitely benefit the children a lot.