The Application Of Phonics Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Rural Primary School

Vocabulary teaching occupies an important position in English teaching of primary school,which directly influences students' English proficiency and examination results.According to the pilot study,it is obvious that vocabulary is difficult to read and memorize,which becomes the biggest obstacle for most rural primary students.As a consequence,students turn pale at the mere mention of English vocabulary.Only by adopting proper measures can they improve the effectiveness of vocabulary learning.A large number of foreign studies show that phonics approach has advantages for English beginners,which helps students pronounce and spell English words by learning the correspondence between the letter and its sound.Under this background,the research puts Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory and the Theory of Constructivism as the theory basis.According to the current situations of English vocabulary teaching in rural primary School,the phonics approach is applied to English vocabulary teaching in order to prove whether phonics approach is effective in enhancing rural primary school students' pronouncing and spelling ability and cultivating students' interest and confidence.To achieve the goal of the study,two natural classes with totally 60 students in Grade Four,from one rural primary school in Qilihe District of Lanzhou city,participated in the experiment.Class One was arranged as the experimental class,obviously Class Two was the controlled class.Before starting the formal experiment,a pretest was taken for two classes to ensure students' spelling and pronouncing ability in EC and CC had no obvious disparity.And then,students in EC practiced English vocabulary learning with the instruction of phonics approach,and students in CC practiced with the instruction of traditional approach.The teaching experiment lasted sixteen weeks.When the experiment was over,a post-test was taken for two classes again to see if there were noticeable differences emerging between EC and CC in spelling and pronouncing ability.In addition,students in EC answered the questionnaires before and after the experiment to see whether their interest in Englishvocabulary learning was raised by phonics approach.After the experiment,the research shows that phonics approach is more effective in developing students' pronouncing and spelling ability,enhancing their phonics awareness,strengthening their vocabulary memorization,activating their interest and cultivating their habit of self-learning.Meanwhile,phonics approach provides a new orientation to teach English for the teachers in rural primary school,who will rebuild up their confidence in teaching English.However,due to the limitations of sample selection,the research time and the research scope.Therefore,there is still much work to be done in the future research.It is hoped that the research can be applied in practice to promote the English teaching level and improve English teaching in rural primary schools.