The Effect Of Phonics Training On The Word Reading And Spelling Ability Of Non-English Major Students In The Vocational College

Pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary are the three components of English. However, English teachers in China usually attach more importance to grammar and vocabulary, and take pronunciation less seriously. The relationship between letters and sounds, and the effect the sounds have on words learning are ignored. In fact, letters and sounds of more than 80% of the commonly used words are regularly related. By teaching the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, teachers can train the learners to pronounce or even spell a new or unfamiliar word without the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). As the survey shows, the consciousness of the relationship between a word’s spelling and its sound of non-English major students in vocational colleges is not good, and these students often end up in poor performance in English learning.This essay aims to verify whether or not the phonics has significant effect on pronouncing and spelling ability of non-English major students in vocational colleges. An empirical study was conducted for the purpose.50 subjects chosen from the two classes I was teaching were divided into the experimental group and the control group. The pre-test showed that there was no significant difference between two groups. In the experiment, experimental group was taught the correspondence of the sounds to letters and used these correspondences to read and spell words. By an enormous amount of practice, students were well aware of the sounds of letters and of combinations of letters. Thus students were able to tackle the pronunciation of the new vocabulary ultimately. Meanwhile the control group learned the IPA. At the end of the experiment, all the subjects were tested again and completed the post-questionnaire and interview.The data of the tests were analyzed by SPSS 19.0. The results indicate that these students’ pronouncing and spelling ability are correlated with their consciousness of the relationship between a word’s spelling and its sound, and through phonics teaching their pronouncing ability was well improved and their spelling ability was also positively affected. In addition, as shown in this paper, phonics teaching can give students both confidence and the measure of autonomy when they deal with the pronunciation of the new words.