A Study On Phonological Awareness Cultivation In Phonics Teaching In Primary Schools

Phonics Teaching is getting more and more popular in China.However,from the current situation of phonics teaching either in training schools or in full-time schools,phonological awareness cultivation is ignored by many teachers.Besides,many pupils find that it is still difficult to read or spell independently after phonics learning.This study first aims to analyze how does the textbook reflect phonological awareness cultivation in Let's Spell section,and then to explore whether the phonological awareness cultivation can influence pupils' word reading ability or word spelling ability.Firstly,the thesis tries to analyze the phonics activities designed in the textbook.By categorizing kinds of activities of phonics teaching in this section,the study tends to comprehend the textbook editors' intention about phonological awareness cultivation in Let's Spell Section.Then,the study adopts a way of experiment lasting 16 weeks in a public primary school that is located in the downtown of Chengdu.In the preliminary stage,pupils are expected to receive extensive input of listening.When they come to the middle stage,more reading and writing tasks are supposed to be started.Therefore,the study choses pupils in grade four as participants to guarantee the whole study on phonological awareness.Totally 80 pupils from grade 4 participate.They are divided into experimental class and controlled class.For experimental class,the training activities of phonological awareness as well as spelling rules are emphasized during phonics teaching.However,for controlled class,the teaching of phonics rules is the only thing to be imparted.All the participants has three 40-minute English classes each week provided by one teacher.Three tests named Phonological Awareness Test,Word Reading Test and Word Spelling Tests are used to investigate the participants' phonological awareness,word reading ability and word spelling ability.All the data collects from pretest and posttest are analyzed by the data analysis software SPSS 19.0.Eventually,the data collected from the experiment indicates that the participants' phonological awareness,word reading ability and word spelling ability in experimental class had been improved significantly by the end of the experiment.Nevertheless,compared to experimental class,there is no obvious change in controlled class.Besides,the data indicates that there is certain correlation between phonological awareness and word reading ability as well as word spelling ability.To conclude,it can be drawn that the phonological awareness cultivation can improve pupils' word reading ability and word spelling ability.Therefore,the author advocates that more attention should be paid to phonological awareness cultivation in phonics teaching and hopes that the study may provide some suggestions for teachers who are interested in phonics teaching.