The Effect Of Phonics Instruction On Reading Decoding Competence Of Rural Junior High School Students

Reading decoding competence is the primary stage of reading and it is the key to improving one’s reading comprehension.Due to the lack of proper and effective guidance,rural junior high school students are weak in reading decoding competence,such as phoneme awareness,spelling ability and reading fluency,which seriously hinders them from developing their reading comprehension ability.Therefore,it is very necessary to find a solution to the problem.Recently,with the extensive promotion and application of Phonics in China,a large number of researches have shown that it helps students to improve the efficiency of word memory,enhance the awareness of phonemes,and stimulate students’ interest in learning English vocabulary by mastering the rules of spelling.However,by analyzing current researches,it is found that previous researches have rarely combined reading to explore the role of Phonics.Although some studies have shown that Phonics has a positive impact on reading,yet the result of which has not been validated effectively;Also,the subjects of existing researches are mostly primary school students,and less for junior high school students,especially rural junior high school students.Besides,Phonics training method involved is relatively simple,just training Phonics for the sake of Phonics.In view of the above,this thesis attempts to carry out Phonics training combined with picture book reading for rural junior high school students and explore whether it also has positive effect on their phoneme awareness,spelling ability and reading fluency.To find the answer to the research problems,a 4-month experimental study is conducted in Shaxian ** Middle School,taking the 8th grade students as its subject.During the experiment,the experimental class receives phonics training in combination of picture book reading while the control class receives no training.Through the analysis of scores and the two questionnaire results after the experiment,the thesis concludes as follows: Phonics training combined with picture book reading has significant effect on development of students’ phoneme awareness and spelling ability.Besides,it helps spur the development of students’ reading fluency,thus stimulating their interest and enhancing their confidence in reading as well.This study further confirms and verifies the value of learning Phonics in non-English speaking countries.It is of some help to reading teaching in rural junior high school.