A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Phonetic Symbol Teaching For English Vocabulary Acquisition

Based on the study of English vocabulary acquisition,we have come to know that English vocabulary acquisition plays a key role in English learning,and Phonetic symbols also play a key role in vocabulary learning and spelling.For decades,the question of whether we should teach and how to teach phonetic symbol attracted great attention of both teachers and researchers.Scholars at home and broad have conducted researches,and yet their studies have mainly focused on teaching of phonetic symbols and very few,if any,touch upon the effect of phonetic symbol teaching on vocabulary acquisition.The present study is to investigate the effectiveness of English phonetic symbol teaching on vocabulary acquisition in junior high school students.The research focuses on two research questions:(1)Does phonetic symbol teaching help junior high school students toimprove the spelling and reading ability?(2)Does phonetic symbol teaching help the students to improve vocabulary ability? In order to answer the two questions,the author conducted a phonetic symbol teaching in a term for 116 students in Quanzhou High School Affiliated to Fujian Normal University.They were all Chinese native speakers that have been learning English as a foreign language.The students were divided into experimental class and control class.The experimental class conducted phonetic symbol teaching,but control class didn’t.Before the experiment,a dictation of 26 English letters and their vocabulary was carried out,and the mid-term exam and final exam were two important measurement instrument of their vocabulary applied performance.At the end of the experiment,a questionnaire was conducted in the experimental class to obtain their views and attitudes towards the phonetic symbol teaching.Another word test was carried out to compare the subjects’ word spelling performance between the experimental class and the control class.The result of the word test showed that phonetic symbol teaching and vocabulary acquisition correlated closely and phonetic symbol teaching could improve students’ vocabulary acquisition competence,stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm to learn English and helped them build up their confidence in learning English.The result of the second word test showed that there was a significant difference in students’ spelling ability between the experimental class and the control class.In the final exam,there was a significant difference in students’ comprehensive performance between the two classes,indicating that phonetic symbol teaching had a positive impact on vocabulary acquisition.The result showed that that the experimental class performed better than control class.Most of the students were satisfied with the phonetic symbol teaching.In addition,9 students with three levels(upper level,middle level and lower level)of the experimental class were interviewed.All the interviewees stated that they had made great progress through the phonetic symbol teaching.They thought it was of great necessity to apply the phonetic symbol teaching in English teaching.In the whole,the present research has proved that phonetic symbol teaching is beneficial to junior high school students’ English vocabulary acquisition.