The Application Of Phonics To English Phonetics Teaching In Primary School

According to the new curriculum standard(2011),pupils in the primary education stage should acquire five basics including pronunciation,vocabulary,grammar,function and topic in English learning,among which pronunciation is the essential element enabling learners to learn oral English well.Unfortunately,the English phonetic teaching in the primary education stage in China does not seem to be so satisfactory.The great majority of students are still incapable of pronouncing words correctly,resulting in the widespread of "dumb English" among them.One possible way out,suggested by researchers,is to introduce the phonics into English teaching in China.It focuses on helping children to learn the relationship between English letters and sound,thus enabling children to use spelling rules to read words independently.To test the view,this study,mainly based on the theories of language transfer,the affective filter hypothesis and the critical period hypothesis,carries out an experiment aiming to investigate the effect of phonics on phonological awareness and word reading ability of Chinese English learners in primary school.The subjects were 90 pupils in grade three from Nan'an No.2 Primary School in Fujian Province.They were randomly assigned to two classes with similar levels,one experimental class(N = 45)and the other control class(N = 45).In the experimental class,the phonics was used for teaching.While in the control class,the traditional phonetic teaching was adopted.After five months of teaching,a phonetic recognition test and a reading ability test were given to the subjects.The results reveal that there are significant differences between the two teaching methods:(1)The students who have accepted the phonics can decode and read the vocabularies by using their knowledge of the alphabet and word spelling skills.They can confidently read the words learned in the semester,and their pronunciation is obviously better than that of the control class.(2)Phonics can effectively improve the phonological awareness of the primary school students,i.e.students from the experimental class exhibit higher phonological awareness than that of the control class.(3)Phonics can stimulate primary school students'interest to read English words.