A Study On Effects Of Phonics Instruction On English Low Achievers' Word Reading And Spelling Ability In Junior Middle Schools

Phonics is a popular phonological teaching method which emphasizes the letter-sound correspondence in the English-speaking countries.At present,despite the vocabulary class offered in junior middle schools in China,many students still have difficulties in pronouncing or spelling words,especially for English low achievers.Phonics can help English low achievers understand the letter-sound correspondence and combine the pronunciation with spelling of the words together to improve the efficiency of studying and memorizing them.It is never late for English learners to obtain the knowledge of letter-sound consciousness,as most of students lack phonemic awareness.This study aims to explore the effects of phonics instruction on English low achievers in junior middle schools.It is intended to answer the following three research questions:(1)How do English low achievers learn words in junior middle schools?(2)Will English low achievers? phonemic awareness get developed after the phonics instruction?(3)What are the effects of phonics instruction on English low achievers? word reading and spelling ability?A total of 65 students,from Class 3 and Class 4 in Grade 7 of Hangzhou Cuiyuan Middle School participated in this research.15 English low achievers from each class were selected as the subjects of this research,which lasted for eight weeks.Three stages were involved: the pre-experimental,the experimental,and the post-experimental.Class 3 was the experimental class taught by phonics in 6 lessons,while Class 4 is the control class taught by the traditional method.Pre-questionnaire was conducted among all the English low achievers in two classes.Word reading tests and word spelling tests were conducted respectively in the pre-experimental stage and the post-experimental stage among low achievers in both classes,while post-questionnaire was only carried out among the low achievers in the experimental group.After the experiment,the following conclusions are obtained:(1)At present,many students,especially English low achievers,still have difficulties in reading and spelling English words.In additions,most of them lack phonemic awareness.(2)Phonics is conducive to the development of phonemic awareness for the junior middle school students with learning difficulties.(3)Phonics instruction can improve the ability of word reading and spelling for the English low achievers in junior middle schools so as to help them get out of the trouble in learning English to some extent.According to the research findings,some pedagogical implications are proposed afterwards,hoping to provide some suggestions to English teachers.The limitations as well as future suggestions are also presented at the end of the thesis.