A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF PHONICS

INSTRUCTION ON THE DECODING AND ENCODING

PERFORMANCES OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL EFL

STUDENTS IN TAIWAN

字母拼讀教學對 EFL 國中生讀字及拼字表現的影響

指 導 教 授：鍾榮富教授研 究 生：吳佩真

報告人：林淑珍(Na2c0023)

PHONICS

Introduction

2. Purposes of the Study

4. Research Questions3. Significance of the

Study

1. Background and Motivation of the Study

6. Limitations of the Study

LITERATURE REVIEW

4. The Role of Phonics in Taiwan’s EFL Environment

1. The Problems in

English Orthography

3. Relevant Studies in Spelling

Instruction

2. A Review of Phonics

Instruction in the U.S.

METHODOLOGY

1. Subjects

2. Instruments

4. Data Analysis

3. Procedures

6. Analysis of Students’ Accurate Responses in the Oral Pre- and Post-

tests

3. The Statistical Results of the Intermediate Proficiency Group

1. Basic Data Analysis from the

Questionnaire

4. The Results of the Higher Proficiency

Group

5. The Statistical Results of the

Lower Proficiency Group

2. Distribution of Subject into Three Proficiency Levels

7. Analysis of Students’ Accurate

Responses in the Written Test

5. Definitions of the Terms

8. Summary

RESULTS AND

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS,

AND SUGGESTIONS 1. Findings

and Conclusions

2. Pedagogical Implications

3. Suggestions for Further Research

INTRODUCTION

1. Background and Motivation of the Study

2. Purposes of the Study

3. Significance of the Study

4. Research Questions

5. Definitions of the Terms

6. Limitations of the Study

2

1996--- the Education Innovation Council 2001--- fifth and the sixth grades of elementary

school General English Proficiency Test --- elementary

grade students. 1980--the trend of communicative approach (Kuo, 2003) Phonics proponents---to decode and

encode unfamiliar words through prediction English orthography as highly regular and

systematic

1. Background and Motivation of the Study

In Taiwan--- students and the phonetic symbols ESL/EFL pronunciation teaching---a common

trend of familiarizing with English letter-sound relationships.

In the United States---the effectiveness of phonics instruction have identified positive results.

Most phonics programs are limited to training learners to decode and encode monosyllables.

1. Background and Motivation of the Study

1

To investigate the effectiveness of

phonics instruction through oral and written tests.

To explore the phonics patterns which students are more familiar with.

To probe the relationship between students’ oral and written performances and their proficiency levels.

2. Purposes of the Study

1

The results can provide English teachers with a future

reference in pronunciation teaching. The results can provide suggestions for practitioners in

Taiwan. Help teachers have a better understanding of the effects

of phonics teaching. Enable us to have a better understanding of some traditional thinking relating to foreign language learning. To identify the sound patterns that are naturally more

familiar to the students Provide teachers with a better understanding of which

approach to use in teaching their students the vocabulary of the language.

3. Significance of the Study

1

(1) Do the subjects’ genders show significant effects on

their spoken and written performance?

(2) Do the periods of the previous English learning

experience significantly influence students’ spoken

and written performance?

(3) Does the nationality of students’ phonics teachers

affect students’ spoken and written performance?

4. Research Questions

(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?

(7) Which phonics patterns are Chinese EFL students more familiar with?

4. Research Questions

1

Decoding: Decoding refers to analyzing a speech

into segments and identifying clauses, phrases, and other linguistic units.

Encoding: Encoding refers to turning a message into linguistic form using semantic systems, grammatical systems, and phonological systems

Monosyllable: Monosyllable refers to a word consisting of one syllable

Disyllable: Disyllable refers to a word consisting of two syllables

5. Definitions of the Terms

1

Only sixty first-grade students of Yang Ming Junior

High School participated as subjects of the study.

The available information about students’ English learning experience is based on a self-reported questionnaire.

Only 23 phonics patterns of vowel letters were employed in the oral and written tests. only monosyllables were chosen as the test words in the written test.

6. Limitations of the Study

1

LITERATURE REVIEW

1. The Problems in English Orthography

2. A Review of Phonics

Instruction in the U.S.

3. Relevant Studies in Spelling

Instruction

4. The Role of Phonics in Taiwan’s EFL Environment

The Traditional Approaches

The Constructivist Approaches

The Approach Integrating the Concept

of “Phonological Awareness”

3

1. The Problems in English Orthography

O’Grady & Dobrovosky (1988) indicated that English orthography has five problems.

About 75% to 80% of the English vocabulary still contains regular letter-sound relationship (Huang, 1999b)

1. Some letters do not represent any sound in a particular word

through, sigh

2. A group of two or more letters are used together to represent a sound

think, chip, ship

3. A single letter can represent a cluster of two or more sounds

saxophone, exile

4. The same letter can represent different sounds in different words

on, bone, one

5. The same sound can be represented by different letters in different words

rude, loop, soup, Sue, to, two

O’Grady & Dobrovosky (1988) indicated that English orthography has five

problems2

the

analytic approach

Also known as implicit phonics (Gunning, 1996) Time spent on workbook practice does not seem to

correlate to gains in achievement (e.g., Leinhardt, Zigmond, & Cooley, 1981)

the synthetic approach

(Stahl, 2002): As explicit phonics, children are taught letter-sound correspondences, and then how to blend the letters into words.Lapp and Flood (1997), “a trend in the data favors explicit phonics [instruction] because it provides children with close approximation between letters and sounds”Stahl (2002) criticized that the synthetic approach usually includes practice in rarely structured stories.

Gunning (1996) recommended a combination of the analytic and synthetic approaches because novice readers need to have the target sound emphasized by hearing it isolated (synthetic approach), and they need to hear it in the context of a real word (analytic approach).

The Traditional Approaches

2

the spelling-based approach

(Clarke, 1989) -- based on the view that addition of invented spelling to a synthetic phonics-reading program facilitated children’s mastery of letter-sound relations Henderson (1981) -- word study was developed from observations of the developmental nature of spelling

the analogy-based approach

Children are taught to compare unknown words and already known words.Gaskins (1995) developed a word identification program that eventually emphasized phonemic awareness and decoding by analogy.As Stahl (2002) indicated, analogies can be a powerful instructional approach, but it needs to be taught together with other decoding approaches.

The Constructivist Approaches

2

Adams, 1990;Stahl, 2002; Yopp, 1988

Phonological awareness may include blending, segmentation, deletion, word-to-word matching, and/or sound to word matching.

Adams (1990)

A child’s phonological awareness ability is a better predictor of success in reading.

The National Reading Panel (2000)

Stronger effects were found on decoding measures, which were more closely related to phonological awareness.

Stahl’s (2002)

1. Early and systematic phonics instruction possibly leads to better achievement.2. Different methods of phonics instruction, as long as they are systematic, seem to have similar results.

The Approach Integrating the Concept of “Phonological

Awareness” 2

3. Relevant Studies in Spelling Instruction

before 1950s after 1950s

Learning to spell relied on learning the spellings of independent words.

It was considered that the English orthography is systematic and learning to spell is involved in learning characteristics of the system.

Ernest Horn (1919) suggested that the most effective and productive spelling methods were those aiding students to memorize individual words.

Hall (1960) concluded that the spellings of English words could be categorized as regular, semi-regular and irregular.

3. Relevant Studies in Spelling Instruction

Frith(1980)

Spelling is not a low-order psychomotor skill but is a consequence of complicated cognitive operations.

Henderson and Beers(1980)

Reported how spelling ability develops as the learner progresses from an initial awareness of print toward greater understandings of relationships between spoken and written language.

Stahl (2002)

Children can spell regular words by performing three steps: segment the spoken words; assign a letter to each sound; write the letters down.

2

Huang (1999b): the difficulties of phonics instruction in

Taiwan

Phonics teaching is not helpful for EFL students in terms of vocabulary learning.

The difference in the backgrounds of EFL students and native speaker students lowers the effects of phonics in the EFL environment.

Linguistic method defeated phonic method in 1930s in TEFL and K.K. phonetic symbol instruction started to be rooted in Taiwan TEFL.

The effect of phonics was limited .

The collection of phonics rules in teaching materials were incomplete and sound value, syllable division, vowel reduction, morphophonemic alternation and spelling still need further reexamination.

4. The Role of Phonics in Taiwan’s EFL Environment

Recently, researches on phonics instruction and teaching material have increased, this has helped both teachers and learners overcome some of the previous difficulties.

The study of Chu (1997) discovered that the students had insufficient knowledge of English letter-sound correspondence, with major errors mostly occurring in pronouncing vowels.Students’ longer experience in English learning positively affected their pronunciation skills.

Many studies showed that the subjects learned words on a lexical basis, rather than on a principled approach based on phonetics properties of the words.

4. The Role of Phonics in Taiwan’s EFL Environment

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The End

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