The Application Of Phonics Instruction To Teaching Early Literacy In Rural Primary School

Phonics instruction is an approach which is based on teaching the relationship between letters or combinations of letters and the sounds that go with them.Phonics instruction is an approach which is the useful way for children in UK and other countries as English for their mother language to learn English.New curriculum reformation for primary English puts forward that primary school students need to know the simple name-sound correspondences before they come into middle school(Ministry of Education,2001).This research used phonics to early literacy teaching in rural primary school with an aim to test: 1)Can Phonics Instruction improve Chinese EFL rural pupils’ phonological awareness? 2)Can Phonics Instruction improve Chinese EFL rural pupils’ word decoding? 3)Can Phonics Instruction improve Chinese EFL rural pupils’ spelling?In this research,70 pupils who had half a year’s experience of learning English from two classes in Grade 3 of Tongwei Siyuan Experimental School in Gansu Province were selected randomly and tested over a period of four months.This research used the experimental method.This research made literature review on phonics and the related research present situation,explained the basic theory of phonics and related concepts.On account of many rural pupils can’t learn new words according to the letter name-sound correspondences but memorizing words by repeating them many times,this research used English early literacy in rural primary school as the breakthrough point,discussed the feasibility of the application of the phonics to English early literacy teaching in rural primary school.Besides,this research tried to design an English early literacy teaching model suitable for rural pupils,so as to provide a reference model for specific teaching practice.Thirdly,the experiments were used,and the experimental data were processed and analyzed by SPSS24.0.According to the experimental results,the following conclusions were drawn: 1)Phonics Instruction could improve rural pupils’ phonological awareness.The experimental class performed better than the control class on Initial Sound Oddity Detection,Caudal Sound Oddity Detection and Rime Oddity Detection;The experimental class performed much better than the control class on Phoneme Blending and Phoneme Segment.2)Phonics Instruction could improve rural pupils’ word decoding.The experimental class performed better than the control class on real words(e.g.,hop,set)and pseudo-words containing a short vowel,real words and pseudo-words containing a digraph;The experimental class performed much better than the control class on real words(hope,site)and pseudo-words where a long vowel is marked bythe final e,real words(pain,sleep)and pseudowords with a long vowel,and real word(boy,loud)and pseudo-words containing a diphthong.3)Phonics Instruction could improve rural pupils’ spelling.The experimental class performed better than the control class on Initial Sound Dictation and Caudal Sound Dictation;The experimental class performed much better than the control class on Digraph Dictation and Caudal Consonant Clusters Dictation;The experimental class performed best on Initial Consonant Clusters Dictation compared with the control class.Therefore,this research found that it is feasible and effective to apply phonics to English early literacy teaching in rural primary school.