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A Study on the Effects of Phonics
Instruction on the Decoding and
Encoding Performances of Junior
High School EFL Students In
Taiwan
researcher: 吳佩真
reporter: 徐家慧
instructor: 鍾榮富教授
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 background and motivation of the study
In the past, pronunciation was considered to be a
liguistic form, instead of language function.
In 1980, phonics instruction become an
essensial feature of pronuciation teaching.
Phonics proponents indicate that once learners
learn the letter-sound correspondences, they
should be able to decode and encode unfamiliar
printed words through prediction.(Kuo, 2003)
- Phonics plays the role of helping children to
recognize words in reading and spelling
programs.(Lin, 2001; Kuo, 2003)
- Recent studies on ESL/EFL pronunciation
teaching show a common trend of -familiarizing
non-native students with English letter-sound
relationships(Krielder, 1972; Paulson& Bruden,
1977; Morley, 1991)
1.2 purposes of study
to investigate the effectiveness of phonics
instruction prior to formal English instruction
to explore which phonics rule is more familiar to
junior high school stuents
To probe the relationships between students' oral
and written performances and their proficiency
levels
1.3 Research Questions
1. Do the subjects' genders show significant effects
on their spoken and written performance?
2. Do the periods of the previous English learning
experience significantlu influence students'
spoken and written performance?
3. Does the nationality of students' phonics
teachers affect students' apoken and written
performance?
4. Do Chinese EFL students have better ideas
about English stress after having received
phonics instruction?
5. Do students decode multi-syllables as well as
monosyllables after having received phonics
instruction?
6. Do students' performances in the oral test
correlate to those of the written test?
Chapter 2
Literature Review
2.1 The problem of orthography
O'Grady & Dobrovsky (1988) indicated that
English orthography has five problems.
a) Some letters do not represent any sound in a
particular word, e.g.: through, sigh.
b) A group of two or more letters are used together
to represent a sound, e.g.: think, chip, ship.
c) A single letter can represent a cluster of
two or more sounds, e.g.: saxophone,
exile.
d) The same letter can represent different
sounds in different words, e.g.: on, bone,
one.
e) The same sound can be representd by
different letters in different words, e.g.:
rude, loop, soup, Sue, to, two.
2.2 A review of the phonics instruction in
the U.S
Johnson & Pearson (1978) stated that phonics
instruction is the means which helps the child to
pronounce an unfamiliar printed word, and
consequently understand it.
In discussing with Chall's (1967) review of begining
reading instruction, Stahl (2002) identified three
types of phonics instrutional approaches available
since 1960.
2.3The Constructivist Approaches
Children go through a series of stages of word
recognition and spelling. Bear & Barone (1989)
and Stahl (2002) suggested tht children should
be taught to construct their own knowledge
about words, at least part of the time, in order to
develop these concepts of how words are put
together.
In the 1990s, two contemporary approaches were
developed, the spelling-based approach (Bear et
al., 2000; Henderson, 1981).
2.4 The approach Intergrating the
Concept of "Phonological Awareness"
It can be defined as the ability to recognize units
of spoken language smaller than the syllable. It
may include blending, segmentation, deletion,
word-to-word matching, and/or sound to word
matching( Adams, 1990; Stahl, 2002;
Yopp,1988).
2.5The Role of Phonics in Taiwan's EFL
Environment
Recently, EFL educators in Taiwan, however,
have stressed the importance of phonics
instruction. The characteristic of lettersound correspondence in phonics has
been adopted to teach young learners'
pronunciation. As a result, researches on
phonics instruction and teaching material
have increased.
Chapter 3
Methodology
3.1 subject & instrucment
sbject: 80 first-grade students in Yang-ming
Junior High School.
The students came from two classes and at
least have learnt English for 1 year.
Instruments: questionnaire and testing materials
Test materials include oral production test,a
decoding activty and written dictation test, an
encoding exercise.
3.2 The Questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of five items.
Personal information
English learning experience
Period: the length of time that the subjects spent
learning English before entering junior high
school
Phonics learning experience
Nationality: the nationality of the teachers who
taught the subjects English phonics rules
The Four Types of Vowel Patterns in th
oral and Written Tests
Item Type
Vowel patterns
Single Vowel Letters (SVL)
long a/short a, long e/short e,
long i/short i, long o/short o,
lohng u/shot u
Diphthongs (DIP)
oi, ou, oy
Vowel Digraphs (VD)
ai, au, aw, aw, ee, ea, oa, long oo
R-colored Vpwels (RV)
ar, ur
3.3 Procedures
Designing the Questionnaire of Subjects' Background Information and
English Learing Experience
Designing the Oral Production Testing Material and the Written Testing
Material
Sampling and Administering the Questionnaire
Conduction the Tape-recprding of the Oral Production Test
Conducting the Written Dictation Test
Classifying and Scoring the Data
Dividing Subjects According to the Test Scores and the English Learning
Experience
Computing the Scores of the Oral and Written Tests and the Results
Data Analysis
Chapter 4
Result and discussion
4.1 Basic Data Analysis from the
Questionnaire
The questionnaire was a self-report ine
designed to obtain students' background
information about learning English before their
formal English education in junior high. A total of
60 complete sets of data were valid for data
analysis.
4.2 Descriptive Statistics of the Three
Proficiency Groups' Total Scores of all the Test
N
Mean
SD
Min
Max
LPG
16
46.19
9.79
20
57
IPG
29
81.86
14.91
59
111
HPG
15
138.60
17.89
115
168
Total
60
86.53
36.70
20
168
Note. Total score of the three test are 197.
4.3 Descriptive Statistics for the Oral Pretest among the Three Groups
N
Mean
SD
Min
Max
LPG
16
10.94
4.42
2
18
IPG
29
22.86
5.84
13
35
HPG
15
42.20
6.25
33
50
Total
60
24.52
12.70
2
50
Note. Total score in the oral pre-test= 64
4.4 Descriptive Statistics for the Oral
Post-test among the Three Groups
N
Mean
SD
Min
Max
LPG
16
12.56
3.95
3
19
IPG
29
23.66
5.60
15
35
HPG
15
44.00
6.62
35
54
Total
60
25.78
12.78
3
52
Note. Total score in the oral post-test= 64
4.5 A Comparison of the Oral Pre- and
Post-test Scores
Based on the results of the accuracy frequency
of stressd vowels, the following were most
frequently pronounced appropriatelt in the oral
pre-test: debate, freedom, Easter,
peaceful,distance, noodle, foolish, and barber.
Among these words, most of the head vowels
belong to the VV strings, including ee, ea, and
oo.
Chapter 5
Findings and conclusion
Findings
No significant difference exists between the students'
performance in the oral and written tests, nor does any
exist between male and female students. The findings
indicate that subjects' genders have no correlation to
their decoding and encoding performance.
No significant difference was found in the oral and the
written tests of subjects who learned English over
different periods of time before formal English exposure,
The results indicate that prior English learning
experience does not correlate to students' decoding and
encoding abilities.
No significant differences exist between the oral and the
written tests among subjects whose phonics teachers
came from different countries. These finding indicate that
there was no relationship between the nationalities od
students' phonics teachers and the students' abilities to
decode and encode English phonics.
The HPG subjects were found to have significantly
accuracy frequency in the stressed vowels of the multisyllabic words. The results show that knowledge of
syllable and stress patterns of English is developed only
when the students have had some appreciable capacity
to decode and encode both spoken and written texts in
the language.
The perecentage of accuarcy in reading monosyllabic
words was higher than that of reading multi-syllables in
all the proficiency groups. The results indcate that all the
subjects could decode monosyllables better than multisyllables.
The IPG and the HPG subjects' performances show
significant correlation between the oral and written tests.
Thus, their deciding abilities closely parallel their
encoding abilitises.
The subjects were found to have better performance
when they decoding the words of single vowel letters
and vowel digraphs. They also perfprmed better when
they encoded the words of diphthongs and r-colored
vowels. The findings indicate that studemts might have
different performance for different sound patterns in the
language.