An Action Research On Employing Phonics To Develop Pupils’ Key Competencies In The English Subject

Key competencies refer to the quality and ability that students should obtain in order to meet the demands of lifelong development and social development.They consist of interdisciplinary key competencies and discipline-based key competencies.And key competencies in the English subject are made up of language competencies,learning competencies,thinking competencies and cultural awareness.Phonics is a teaching method which helps children learn to read and spell by teaching them letter-sound correspondence.It enables children to decode and spell unfamiliar words expertly.Most of the research on phonics abroad and at home focuses on the influence phonics has on decoding,spelling and reading.There’s little research whose focus is on the influence phonics has on pupils’ key competencies,especially on pupils’ key competencies in the English subject.This study is concerned with an action research aiming to find out whether the employment of phonics can contribute to the development of pupils’ key competencies in the English subject.If so,which aspects are enhanced?Two participants who had problems in spelling and word reading were chosen from the author’s class.Data were collected through interviews,teaching journals,pretests and posttests to test reading and spelling.Then the multiple sources of data were coded and further analyzed by the author.Findings from the study demonstrate that phonics not only enhances the development of pupils’ language competencies,but is beneficial to their learning competencies as well.In addition,phonics can,to some extent,help to develop pupils’thinking competencies.Finally,the teaching content and the teaching strategies that the author adopted in the research can be a beneficial attempt on teaching pupils phonics and developing pupils’ key competencies in the English subject.