The Relationship Between Chinese University Students’ Phonological Awareness And Word Spelling Ability

Research about "phonological awareness" begins in the 1960s.Because of its important role in learning English,a large number of relevant studies have gradually been carried out in the West.Its study domain has expanded from English to more alphabetic languages such as German,Czech and Spanish.Abundant western studies have proved that the English learners’ phonological awareness correlate to their reading comprehension and word spelling ability,and that phonological awareness plays an important role in children’s future reading ability.However,the majority of studies about "phonological awareness"aim at children living in English-speaking countries.Students in China,as a big group of English learners,are necessary to be studied as the object.In recent years,a handful of scholars began to investigate the phonological awareness of domestic students.However,such studies are rare and the research findings are not persuasive enough.The present study mainly addressed the following two questions:(1)What is the relationship between Chinese university students’ phonological awareness and their word spelling ability?(2)Can phonological awareness instruction improve Chinese university students’ phonological awareness as well as their word spelling ability?This study involved 71 freshmen selected from a university in Nanjing,Jiangsu province.The participants were divided into an experimental group and a control group based on their class.The study lasted for 8 weeks and went through two stages.At the first stage,all the participants received a phonological awareness pretest and a word spelling ability pretest.The outcome of Independent Sample T-Test showed that there were no big differences between the two groups.The second stage was the phonological awareness instruction.Participants in the experimental group received 320-minute instruction in 8 weeks while participants in the control group only received regular English class as usual.When the instruction ended,all the participants had a phonological awareness posttest and a word spelling ability posttest.The results revealed that(1)there was a correlation between Chinese university students’phonological awareness and their word spelling ability;(2)compared with phoneme awareness,syllable awareness was a better predictor to Chinese university students’ word spelling ability;(3)the phonological awareness instruction did have a positive effect on Chinese university students.After receiving the phonological awareness instruction for 8 weeks,the participants improved their phonological awareness and word spelling ability obviously.The result enriches the domestic studies on phonological awareness.The discovery provides a convenient and effective means for detecting students with word learning problems.The result also validates the importance of phonological awareness for Chinese university students.It demonstrates the necessity,effectiveness and practicality of phonological awareness instruction.