The Application Of Phonics To English Vocabulary Teaching In Rural Primary School

With two years’ working experience as an English teacher in a rural primary school,the author finds that vocabulary is the biggest obstacle which makes the learning of English difficult.As a result,students will become anxious at the mere mention of English vocabulary.Given the complicity and importance of vocabulary,the author appeals for an effective method for learners to break through the bottleneck in English vocabulary learning.And this method is the so-called phonics.In this research,based on the difficulties and challenges of students in learning vocabulary,the author raises the following three research questions:1.What is the impact of phonics application on students’ sound discrimination ability?2.What is the impact of phonics application on students’ spelling ability?3.What is the impact of phonics application on students’ general English proficiency?The author conducts the experiment in Wudian Shiyan Primary School in Xiangyang City,Hubei Province.Class One and Class Two in Grade Four are chosen by the author as research subjects.Class One plays the role of experimental group and students in this class receive the phonics treatment.Class Two is used as the control group,which means that students in Class Two are instructed by the traditional way in teaching and learning vocabulary.The experiment lasts from September in 2016 to January in 2017.In the research,the author uses two instruments: interview,tests(pretest and posttest).Prior to the research,the author interviews four teachers in the subject school to find the challenges in vocabulary learning.The tests consist of the pretest and the posttest.Both the pretest and posttest contain three parts: sound discrimination,spelling and general English proficiency.SPSS 19.0 is used to analyze the data got from the tests.And the result shows that average scores of the EG are much higher than those of CG.Therefore,it is safe to conclude that phonics has some significant influence on students’ sound discrimination ability,spelling ability and general English proficiency.Hopefully,phonics,as a means of connecting sounds and letters,will be a good method in removing the obstacle in vocabulary learning,so as to improve their general English proficiency.