A Correlational Study On Pinyin Level,English Phonological Awareness And English Word Reading Performance Of Children EFL Learners In A Chinese Primary School

Phonological awareness is a strong predictor for early English reading performance which has been studied on both native English speakers and EFL learners.A number of prior researches indicated that there were significant correlation between Chinese and English phonological awareness with English word reading performance.And sufficient studies given to the function of Pinyin provided the evidence to the fact that Pinyin does make unique contribution to Chinese and English phonological awareness.This study aims to examine intercorrelations of Chinese children EFL learner's Pinyin level,English PA and English word reading performance.Therefore,there are three research questions for the current study emerging:(1).Are Chinese children's Pinyin level,English PA and English word reading performance correlated?(2).Does English PA training facilitate children's English PA,Pinyin level and English word reading performance?(3).Does Pinyin training facilitate children's Pinyin level,English PA and English word reading performance?Around 80 second-grade children from two intact classes are randomly chosen from a primary school in Ding Xi city of Gansu province participated in the study.One class received a8-week Pinyin training,while another class received English PA training program.Both pretest and posttest were administrated in two classes to examine whether there were correlation between Pinyin and English PA with English word reading performance.Tests tasks of Pinyin and English PA include onset judgement,rime detection,onset-rime blending,English PA rhyme detection and Pinyin tone detection.And English word reading test is consisted of sounding out English real words and nonwords.SPSS 20.0 was used to data collection and analyze.The results showed that there were positive correlation on Pinyin level,English PA and English word reading performance.And with regard to the function of Pinyin training program,it has positive effect on Chinese children EFL learners' English word reading performance,and especially has significant effect on English nonwords reading.Furthermore,as well as the effect of English PA training program,it is a strong predictor for Chinese children's English PA development and English word reading performance,and especially has significant effect on English real words reading.In other words,English PA training successfully promoted Chinese children's English literacy development.The findings in this study provided significant pedagogy implications for EFL instructors.It is indeed necessary for EFL instructors not only to value the importance of explicit English PA instruction during Chinese children's initial primary school years,but also noticing the role of Pinyin level in phonological awareness processing decoding skills.