An Action Research On The Application Of Phonics To English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary Schools

English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2011-year edition)stipulates that at the end of primary school,students should reach the secondary language goal.Students can recognize and read the words they have learned,read simple words according to the rules of phonics,know that words are made up of letters and letter combinations and learn vocabulary according to the sound,meaning and shape of words.However,grammar explanation is no longer emphasized these days,practicing pronunciation mechanically and repeating words again and again are still widespread.This inefficient vocabulary teaching method causes students to lose interest in English learning,and their English grades are declining gradually.This study chooses 29 students from Grade Five as the research objects,and uses action research to explore the feasibility of phonics in rural primary school English vocabulary teaching.The process of this action research is divided into three stages.The purpose of the first research is to cultivate students’ interest in learning by teaching the pronunciation of 26 letters and simple phonics skills.The second round of action research mainly teaches students the pronunciation of letter combinations.The purpose of that is to teach students the pronunciation of letter combinations and cultivate students’ phonic awareness.The third round of research is mainly to consolidate and review the knowledge that they have learned by phonics training which will improve students’ phonics ability.Through three rounds of research,this study tries to solve the following questions:(1)Can the teaching of phonics stimulate rural primary school students’ interest in English learning?(2)Can phonics improve rural primary school students’ pronunciation and spelling?(3)How is phonics taught effectively?This action research uses the qualitative and the quantitative methods to analyze data from the questionnaire surveys,the tests,the interviews and the teaching diaries.The conclusions are drawn as follows: Phonics can stimulate rural primary school students’ interest in learning English and improve rural primary school students’ ability in spelling and pronunciation;Different teaching strategies can promote phonics teaching;Attention should be paid to the cultivation of phonetic awareness in the process of phonics teaching.This research has some enlightenment for the vocabulary teaching in rural primary school: Teachers should update their teaching concepts and apply phonics to their practical teaching;Students should fundamentally realize the importance of phonics and phonetic awareness and learn to use phonics to read and spell words.