A Study On The Effect Of Phonological Awareness Training On Rural Children's English Vocabulary Learning

Phonological awareness (PA) has been a hot topic in western psycholinguistics and pedagogical linguistics for a long time. It is a part of metalinguisitic awareness. Many western psychologists have reached a consensus: PA has a significant impact on English vocabulary spelling ability. Through reviewing the current situation of PA, the author finds that subjects selected in these empirical studies show significant imbalance. Most subjects are coming from urban areas, while the research carried out for rural children is very little. The starting point of this study is to explore the current situation of English phonological awareness in rural areas in China and to carry out an empirical study of teaching English to rural children based on the phonological awareness training. It also investigates the effect of English phonological awareness training for rural children's English vocabulary learning, so as to improve their English learning efficiency.In this study the author employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative research is mainly a series of test and post-training survey, while qualitative research is the semi-open interview. Experimental and control classes are used in this study. Through the comparison of the pretest and post-test between these two classes, the author investigates the effect of PA training for rural children's English vocabulary learning. This study mainly focuses on the following parts: (1) to understand the current situation of English phonological awareness for children in rural primary school; (2) to explore whether phonological awareness training can improve rural children's phonological awareness level; (3) to explore the effective methods for rural children to develop and improve English phonological awareness; (4) to investigate the effectiveness of PA training combined with phonics instruction for improving rural children's English vocabulary learning capacity, especially English vocabulary spelling ability. Then take it as a basis, the author explores the necessity and feasibility of carrying out PA training for rural children, so as to provide some referential teaching models for rural primary school English teaching reform in China. Finally, this study can provide an authentic and reliable reference for phonological awareness research in China. In this research, the author chose two intact classes in Banpo Primary School. These two classes were both Six Grade. There were altogether 56 students. Class One had 29 students, and Class Two had 27 students. Class One was chosen as the experimental class and Class Two as the control class. Both of them received pre-test and post-test about their phonological awareness and their words and non-words spelling ability. Then, the experiment class will take a sixteen-week phonological awareness training. After the training, there would be a questionnaire, an interview and a dictation for both classes. Through the horizontal and longitudinal contrast, the author explored the effect of phonological awareness training for rural children's English vocabulary learning. All data collected were analyzed by SPSS17.0.The results of the research are as follow:(1) Before PA training, most of the children thought that it was difficult for them to learning English, especially English vocabulary learning and PA is unknown to them.(2) Subjects in EC made greater progress in PA level than those in CC after the 16 weeks'training, while there was no difference in PA level between EC and CC before the training of phonological awareness. Therefore, it could be concluded that children's phonological awareness could be significantly improved through explicit PA training combined with phonics instruction.(3) After the PA training, there was a significant progress in EG. However, CG without PA training had no significance in the test. The pre-test of words and non-words spelling capacity between EG and CG showed that they had the equal start. Therefore, it could be concluded that phonological awareness combined with phonics instruction could have an effective impact to improve rural children's words and non-words spelling ability.(4) EC has a more significant improvement than CC in English words dictation. Children in EC could write regular words more easily than those in CC through dictation. Therefore, it could be concluded that phonological awareness training could significantly improve rural children's English vocabulary learning capacity.Based on the above research results, this thesis provides some inspiration for rural children's English vocabulary learning from three perspectives: Firstly, for children in rural primary school, PA training combined with phonics instruction can have a positive effect to improve their English vocabulary learning capacity. Secondly, PA training provides specific guidance for rural English educators so as to improve teaching effect in rural primary school. Thirdly, for English teaching, this method digs out learner's inner initiative through the improvement of PA. Therefore, it becomes an inner need to improve English learning capacity. In other words, it could provide some referential teaching model for the reform of English teaching in rural primary school. At last, the author puts forward some suggestions for English teaching and learning, so as to provide an authentic and reliable research data in some similar study.