本科学生毕业论文-自然拼读法在小学英语教学中的应用.docx

The Application of Phonics to English Vocabulary Teaching
in Primary Schools

Abstract：Phonics is an English teaching method that combines the pronunciation, spelling and reading together, which builds the corresponding relationship between letter and morphology. This kind of teaching method is good for helping students to construct the relationship between morphology and spelling. In addition, it is also beneficial for students to memorize the pronunciation, spelling and the meaning of words naturally at the same time. The Phonics, which is fit for the characteristics of children’s cognition and simplifies the miscellaneous spelling rules. Meanwhile, the Phonics, can enhance student’s to remember words correctly and quickly, and also improve the achievement of their English learning. In this study, the author takes the students in Heng Kou School as experimental subject and they are in grade 4. The experiment consists of three parts: pre-test, the practice of Phonics teaching, post-test. The analysis in the pro-test showed that the experimental group had significantly improved student achievement in English. Therefore, it is concluded Phonics teaching is effective for primary school.

Key Words: Phonics; vocabulary teaching; English teaching in primary school

自然拼读法在小学英语教学中的应用

摘要: 自然拼读法是通过建立字母组合与词形之间的对应关系，是一种将发音、拼写及阅读相互结合的英语教学法。这种学习方法有助于帮助学生建立字形与发音之间的联系，自然的将单词的发音、拼写以及词义同时记住。它符合儿童认知特点的方式，简化了繁琐难记的拼读规则，能较快的提高学生识记单词的准确性以及拼写单词的速度，逐步增强他们英语学习的成就感。在本研究中，作者以恒口小学四年级为实验对象。实验过程包括三部分：前测，自然拼读法教学实践，后测。通过对前后侧的分析得知，实验组的学生英语成绩有了明显提高。因此，本次研究得出如下结论：自然拼读法对小学英语教学是有效的。

关键词：自然拼读法；词汇教学；小学英语教学

1. Introduction

The spelling and memorizing of vocabulary are the basic steps of English learning, which have direct influence on further English study in the future. Therefore, the spelling and memorizing of vocabulary are always regarded as the significant steps of primary-school English teaching. Till now, in most of the primary school English teaching, teachers still adopt the traditional methods to teach vocabulary. That is, firstly lead students to read the pronunciation of vocabulary once, and then students read after teachers in union for several times, and lastly memorize words through rote learning and copy mechanically after class. Under the influence of the traditional vocabulary teaching methods, it is difficult for students to memorize words and it’s easy to forget them. The reason is that, for the traditional vocabulary teaching methods, the pronunciations and forms of words are separated, leading to students knowing how to write down the words but not being able to pronounce them. As time passes by, students lack interest in actively learning English and finally fall behind others. We should pay attention to this phenomenon.
Vocabulary is one of the important parts of language. As Wilknins said, “if there’s no grammar, most things cannot be explained; if there’s no vocabulary, nothing can be explained.” For the English learners, to master the vocabulary of English is an important aspect of improving English. Primary school study is the initial period of English learning, which mainly trains students’ learning and speaking ability. Most students are interested in this learning, singing and dancing in the class. However, when it comes to the vocabulary becoming their learning tasks, they start to be afraid of learning English because for them memorizing words is quite boring. It is of great importance how to stimulate students’ interest in learning vocabulary and build up the confidence in learning English by teaching and learning English wit wisdom, combing imitation with learning words, combing learning Chinese with learning English, and combing speaking; listening with reading and writing, and this is the aims of this paper.
2. Background Information of Phonics

2.1 Concepts of Phonics
The Phonics approach dates to 1700’s. Back then, children were taught to read through their memorization of twenty-six-letter alphabet. Since many books hadn’t been written, their primary textbook was the Bible.
Phonics Teaching Method refers to the method when coming across a word, we can pronounce the word according to the pronunciation rules of English letters in words. Namely, it is to learn gradually through “letter pronunciation, letter groups’ pronunciation, words, basic sentences and then phrases”, which makes students master phonics teaching method. The aim is to train students’ correct sense of English and help them make good foundation for English learning. In the kindergartens of countries with English as the native language, children begin to receive phonics teaching method from three years old.
2.2 Studies Abroad and at Home.
2.2.1 Related Study of Phonics Abroad
Abroad: in America, the phonics teaching has been adopted for hundreds years, which is the compulsive courses that local children in America and Canada take. The proper phonics teaching method is regarded as the most effective and direct method for teaching mother tongue. Moreover, phonics teaching method is students’ compulsive course in foreign countries.
Blevins stated in “What is phonics” that the phonics teaching method includes the relationship of pronunciation and form, which teaches students the most general pronunciation-form relation, making students be able to read and spell words. The ability of read words is the key to successful reading.
In “Phonics handbook”, Lloyd suggested to divide English letters into seven groups, the advantage of which is that once learning the letters in the first group, students can practice reading and spelling words. This is beneficial to distinguish letters with confusing pronunciations. (Lloyd 18).
Searfoss and Readence pointed out that the phonics teaching, context clues and structural analysis are three essential techniques of reading.
Stainthorp and Hughes presented the theory that Reading=Decoding times Comprehension, of which decoding is to transfer the written vocabulary to meaningful oral vocabulary. This is the technique application of phonics.
Adams held hierarchical view of the reading process. In order to understand the significance of articles, we must firstly understand the meaning of sentences; in order to understand meaning of sentences, we must analyze the components of sentences; in order to analyze the components of sentences, we must identify written vocabulary; in order to identify written vocabulary, we must handle letters forming the words. Therefore, phonics teaching method is the basic method of reading. (Adams 30).
Teaching method is the only successful technique to help students overcome reading difficulties.

2.2.2 Related Study of Phonics at Home
Scholars at home begin to try to bring in phonics teaching method and they have made related experimental research. For instance, Gaomin held the view that phonics teaching method unifies the pronunciations and spelling of English words, which can effectively improve the efficiency of students’ learning and memorizing words. In addition, she thought that phonics teaching has advantages as follows: effectively making use of positive transfer effect of pinyin; avoiding disturbance bought by learning international phonetic system; and promoting students development of language skills.
Wang Lu made study from the respective of children’s cognitive characteristics and psychological need of children in the learning process. She thought that phonics teaching mostly meets psychological needs of children, and mobilizes the intrinsic motivation of study subjects. In addition, phonics teaching fits in with children’s intrinsic cognitive mechanism, which creates a relaxed mental environment and cognitive environment for children’ development of active cognition, and reflects the subjectivity of learning subjects.（Wang 25).
From the aspect of phonics teaching strategies, Kuang Huichun considered that when applying phonics teaching method, we must elaborately choose and compile materials and ensure the materials are with meaningful context. Moreover, we are required to practice the same phoneme repeatedly, and avoid conducting isolating phonics practice. In addition, the material chosen should be interesting to keep students’ interest. Chen Xizhen has analyzed problems of phonics teaching in the application to primary school classroom teaching, and she put forward recommendations for improvement: skillfully use comparison, sign language, games, tongue twisters and evaluation mechanism.
In conclusion, the researches of phonics at home and abroad are based on English being mother tongue or second language. For Chinese students who regard English as foreign language, how to carry out phonics teaching in the environment of Chinese teaching, is worth studying
2.3 The Related Theories
The theoretical foundations for the present study are Learnig Transfer, The Theory of Memory, The Theory of Children’s Cognitive Development
2.3.1 Learning Transfer
Transfer refers to the mutual influence of different kinds of knowledge, which exists in the learning with various content and styles and exists in the process of language learning. Psychologists call it as learning transfer. There are two types of learning transfer: positive transfer and negative transfer. When two languages have the same relative structure and units, it will have positive effects which is called “positive transfer”; when two languages have different structure and units, it will have negative effects which is called “negative transfer”. Language transfer is the necessary phenomenon in second language acquisition, which may come from pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar or other aspects. Therefore, mother tongue cannot be ignored in second language learning.
Therefore, for the phonics teaching, we should effectively make use of the positive transfer of Chinese pinyin. As most of English pronunciations (especially for consonants) are similar to Chinese pinyin, we can make use of the positive transfer of Chinese pinyin in the early stage of phonics teaching to help students effectively master the pronunciation of English letters and letter groups.

2.3.2 The Theory of Memory
Memory plays a much wider role in language use. Anything that is stored in the mind for any length of time, whether seconds or decades, involves some form of memory. In this sense memory is involved in all aspects of the processing of a sentence. Memory is the retention of learned material. Humans have three types of memory: the short-term memory, the working memory and the long-term memory.
The working memory: the memory system used for holding and manipulating information while various mental tasks are carried out. Gathercole and Baddeley have put forward a theory which accounts for aspects of short-term memory called working memory. This consists of a central executive, which controls how information is passed around the memory system in the mind, visual and phonological slave systems controlled by the executive. Working memory is used for processing information while the mind works on various tasks. The phonological system has a phonological store from which information tends to fade within a second or two. To extend its life people repeat things over and over, whether aloud or silently. They are articulating the sounds of the words, even if they do not say them. To keep the information in working memory from 18 fading it must be constantly repeated. Whatever you are trying to remember circulates round this loop. The speed with which information travels round the loop governs how much can be remembered. That is to say, the faster a person can repeat things the more they can remember. Working memory is not an independent part of the mind but is related to pronunciation and to language use. Bossley regards working memory as a historical by-product of the use of language. Using the second language means learning how to process information for a second time to the extent that working memory depends upon the first language. The working memory theory sees pronunciation as vital to language processing. If we cannot say the sounds quickly, our short-term memory span will be very restricted and consequently we will face severe difficulties with the processing of language. The neglect of pronunciation in recent years has hampered not just the students’ ability to pronounce words, but also their fundamental capacity to process the language. We should then take pronunciation much more seriously.
2.3.3 The Theory of Children’s Cognitive Development
Swiss psychologist, biologist and philosopher Jean Paget, established the perfect Theory of Children’s Cognitive Development, which is rated as the most authoritative theory in 20th century developmental psychology. Cognitive Development refers that in the process of adapting to external environment of individuals after birth, individuals’ way of thinking vary with the increasing of ages when in the environment of cognizing all kinds of things and coming across difficulties. Through carefully and continuously observing and recording the child (his daughter)’s cognition of handling things in natural environment, Jean piaget analyzed and summarized different stages of children’s cognitive development, which are sensor motor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage. Primary students are in the third period of cognitive development stages, which is concrete operational stage. The characteristics are as follows: language has the communicative and social features; the activity of thinking can be transferred; logical operation occurs really for the first time. Meanwhile, they are not self-centered, and can follow and accept other’s opinions. In Jean piaget’s opinion, children in this stage can understand rules, so we can provide them with skill practice. Therefore, it is necessary to teach primary students the rules of letters and letter groups pronunciations in the phonics teaching. They can understand, accept and apply this method in practice.
3. Experiment Process

As stated above, the phonics method has a significant influence on memory and first language vocabulary teaching. More research on the effectiveness of phonics method in the foreign language vocabulary teaching in China should be done. Especially whether it is useful for the primary school students is not yet clear. Hence, this research wants to testify the application of phonics to primary school vocabulary teaching in the hope of finding a more effective way to help students learn vocabulary in classroom.

3.1 Research Design

The experimental subjects of this study are class one and class two of grade four of Hengkou Primary School in Ankang City. Class one grade four is the experimental class, and class two Grade four is as the contrast class. The two classes have