Assessment Tasks

To investigate students’ progress on the aspects of phonological awareness after they received intensive phonics teaching focusing on blending and segmentation, a pretest and a posttest were carried out at the beginning and at the end of the semester respectively.

Students’ phonological awareness progress was measured in the pretest and posttest in terms of their alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness skills.

Students’ alphabetic knowledge was evaluated on the recognition of letter sounds in isolation in both the pretest and posttest. In the pretest, students were tested on their phonological awareness on the blending skills including recognition of V-C blending, and recognition of C-VC blending; and the segmentation skill focusing on the recognition of phonemes in words. In the posttest, three more phonological awareness skills were evaluated in addition to the skills that were measured in the pretest. This time in the posttest, the students were also examined in terms of their rhyming skill, blending skill which focused on production of C-VC blending, as well as the segmentation skill that focused on segmenting syllables in words. Table 3-3 presents the skills evaluated in the pretest and posttest.

Table 3-3 Phonological Awareness Skills Evaluated in the Prestest and Posttest

Pretest Posttest

Recognition of letter-sound correspondence

Recognition of letter-sound correspondence

Recognition of VC blending Recognition of VC blending Recognition of C-VC blending Recognition of C-VC blending Segmentation of phonemes in words Segmentation of phonemes in words

Rhyming

Production of C-VC blending Segmentation of syllables in words

The following sections provide detailed description of the tasks employed in the pretest and posttest to evaluate students’ alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness skills. Each task comprises of four items in the pretest and posttest. (For more examples of the tasks in the pretest and posttest, refer to Appendix C and D)

3.3.3.1 Alphabetic Knowledge

Recognition of Letter Sounds Correspondence

Students’ alphabetic knowledge is evaluated in terms of their recognition of letter sounds in isolation. In the pretest, the letters (from Aa to Mm) evaluated were selected based on what students have already learned in the previous semester before the research; while in the posttest, the remaining letters (from Nn to Zz) trained in the research semester were the focus.

In this letter sound in isolation task, students were asked to circle the sound they heard from the teacher, for example [g] or [p]. According to Byrne &

Fielding-Barnsley (1993), “this recognition procedure is more sensitive than the standard recall method”, that is, asking students “What does this letter say?” Sample examples of the letter sound in isolation task in the pretest and posttest are provided in Table 3-4 and Table 3-5 below respectively.

Table 3-4 Example Items of Letter Sound Correspondence (Pretest) Please circle the letter you hear.

1. d b c g

2. h f k l

Table 3-5 Example Items of Letter Sound in Isolation (Posttest) Please circle the letter you hear.

1. n t s p

2. u e o i

3.3.3.2 Rhyming

Before the rhyming task, the teacher first explained to the students the concept of words that rhyme. For example, toy and boy are the two words that rhyme because cutting off the initial sound of the two words, [t] and [b], the remaining sound is [oy], which is the same. However, fat and hot do not rhyme because neglecting [f] and [h],

the remaining sounds [æt] and [ɑt] are different. In this rhyming task, students were provided with two words in each question item to differentiate between whether the two words rhyme or not. Sample items of the rhyming task are provided in Table 3-6.

Table 3-6 Example Items of the Rhyming Task (Posttest) Please draw a circle if the two words rhyme, if not, draw a cross.

1. cat bat

2. sun fan

3.3.3.3 Blending

There are three sub tasks to evaluate students’ blending skills, including the recognition and production skills. The perception skills focused on V-C and C-VC blendings, both are measured in the pretest and posttest. The production skills focused on C-VC blendings, which was conducted in the posttest only.

Perception of V-C Blendings

V-C blendings are a typical form of “rime” combinations. In this task, students listened to the teacher read the VC blending, and decided the correct combination of what they had heard. Table 3-7 and Table 3-8 present the example items of VC blendings in the pretest and posttest.

Table 3-7 Example Items of V-C Blendings (Pretest) Please circle the letters you hear.

1. ab ac ad

2. eg ek em

Table 3-8 Example Items of V-C Blendings (Posttest) Please circle the letters you hear.

1. op ot oz

2. ut us un

Recognition of C-VC Blendings

In addition, C-VC blendings are typical form of “onset-rime” combinations. In this task, students listened to the teacher read the C-VC blending and chose the intended answer. Tables 3-9 and 3-10 present the example items of VC blendings in the pretest and posttest.

Table 3-9 Example Items of C-VC Blendings (Pretest) Please circle the letters you hear.

1. cab cac cad

2. beg bek bem

Table 3-10 Example Items of C-VC Blendings (Posttest) Please circle the letters you hear.

1. pen ten net

2. dig wig pig

Production of C-VC Blendings

After students received intensive and explicit training on the blending skill, they were asked to produce the C-VC blendings orally. In this task, students are presented with two cards, one card with letter t, the other card with combined letters ig, as presented in Table 3-11.

Table 3-11 Example Items of the C-VC Blending Production Task (Posttest) Try to combine and read out the two sounds together.

1. t-ig 2. s-ot

3.3.3.4 Segmentation

In both pretest and posttest, the segmentation task focused on segmenting phonemes; while in the posttest, there was an additional task of segmenting syllables in words.

Segmentation of Syllables

Before students began with the task, the teacher demonstrated again the skill of segmenting words into syllables. The syllables of a word were compared to the cars of a train; for example, the teacher would explain that there were one train car in the word no, two train cars in the word marker, and three train cars in the word elephant.

Afterwards, students listened to the word in each item and figured out the number of syllables in the word, as shown in Table 3-12.

Table 3-12 Example Items of Syllable Segmentation Task (Posttest) Please write down the number of syllables in the word you hear.

1. tiger 2. beautiful

Segmentation of Phonemes

In both pretest and posttest, students performed in the segmentation of phoneme task. In this task, students hear the word provided and tried to decide the discrete sounds (as represented by letters) that built up the sounds of the words given. Table 3-13 and Table 3-14 present the example items of this phoneme segmentation task in the pretest and posttest.

Table 3-13 Example Items of Phoneme Segmentation Task (Pretest) Please connect the letters you hear in the word.

1. b d

2. d a c

3. f i b

4. h g

Table 3-14 Example Items of Phoneme Segmentation Task (Posttest) Please connect the letters you hear in the word.

1. t p 2. r o t 3. w a n 4. v z