Phonics is defined as a way of teaching reading that stresses the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences and their use in reading and spelling (National Reading Panel, 2000). It is the clearest connecting link between the vocabulary and printed page. After learning these sound-to-symbol skills, most learners are able to read almost anything within speaking and listening vocabularies. It gives them the key to read words they already know, and the skills to look up words they don’t know, allowing comprehension to happen.
2.1.1 Definition of Phonics
Phonics is the idea that spoken language is made up of sounds, and sounds can be mapped to written letters. It is the instruction about the relationship between speech sounds and letters. It involves understanding the alphabetic principle as well. According to Adams (1990, p. 25), phonics referred to a system of teaching reading that built upon the alphabetic principle, a system of which a central component was the teaching of correspondences
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between letters or groups of letters and their pronunciations. In addition, Jorm and Share (1983) stressed that mastery of letter-sound correspondences was essential for the accurate and efficient recognition of many words, because skill in the application of letter-sound knowledge led children to develop rapid and accurate decoding of phonically regular words.
Moreover, children begin to think about sounds in words as they begin to write. The National Reading Panel (2000) considered the knowledge that letters of the alphabet represented phonemes, and that these sounds were blended together to form written words.
That is, readers who are proficient in phonics can sound out words they haven't seen before, without first having to memorize them.
2.1.2 Teaching Approaches of Phonics
Phonics emphasizes how spellings of words are related to speech sounds in systematic ways. Understanding phonics and the alphabetic principle can make learning to read and write easier to achieve, but if phonics instruction is inaccurate and confusing, it can make this learning very difficult. When it comes to phonics approaches, two main teaching methods, the explicit and the implicit approach, are widely discussed (Blevins, 2006; Dakin, 1999).
(1) Explicit Approach
Explicit approach is the part-to-whole learning of words, known as synthetic phonics instruction (Gunning, 1996). It follows a bottom-up model of learning to read. This approach features an early direct and explicit emphasis on learning letter-sound relationships, blending or synthesizing these elements into whole words (Savage, 2011, p. 119). In explicit phonics instruction, teachers not merely demonstrate learners to learn how to blend sounds to produce a word or an approximate pronunciation of a word based on the following sequence, but blend unfamiliar words in context (Blevins, 2006). Each sound associating with a letter in the word
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is pronounced in isolation and then blends together. Words are also decoded in isolation and both vowels and consonants are sounds individually. Firstly, the teacher shows learners the word cat, points to the letter c, and says that it stands for the sound /k/. Secondly, the teacher then points to the letter a, and say it sounds /æ /. Thirdly, the teacher points to the letter t, and says it stands for the sound /t/. Last, learners are then helped to blend the sounds /k/, /æ /, and /t/ together to get /kæ t/. Therefore, the explicit phonics instruction is orderly, planned, reasonably sequenced, and that gradually builds from simple elements to more complex structures. However, a major problem with this instruction is that it is difficult to produce pure speech sounds in isolation. Gunning (1996) argued that some consonants were distorted because these sounds could not be pronounced without a schwa.
(2) Implicit Approach
Implicit approach is defined as analytic phonics instruction or the whole-to-part learning of words. This approach has also been described as a deductive approach, or whole word phonics (Savage, 2011, p. 119). In implicit phonics instruction, the instruction starts with a list of words in which learners need to examine and segment the sounds to discover the similar sounds (Blevins, 2006). Hence, instead of presenting sounds associated with letters in isolation, the teacher states a number of words beginning with the same or similar patterns.
For instance, the teacher asks learners to listen to the following words book, baby, and boat.
The teacher also writes these words on the board. Then, the teacher encourages learners to perceive the initial consonant that letter b stands for the sound at the beginning of the words book, baby, and boat. As a result, learners can be better internalize the knowledge of sounds in words and construct the principles if they discover the clues about sound-symbol associations by themselves (Blevins, 2006). Nevertheless, Beck and Juel (1995) argued that learners might fail in looking for distinctive sounds among the words without requiring
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segmentation skills.
In sum, explicit phonics builds words from single letters, moving from the smallest parts to the whole, whereas implicit phonics teaches the whole words first, moving from the whole to the smallest parts. Although the difference is critical as they have vastly different results, many studies have shown that both explicit phonics approach and implicit phonics approach can contribute significantly to improve learners’ reading difficulties (Adams, 1990; Blevins, 2006; Chall, 1983; National Reading Panel, 2000).
Consequently, teacher should often use a combination of both explicit and implicit phonics instruction and help learners learn sound-symbol relationships that they can use in becoming fluent readers and confident writers. The vital thing to remember is that any method that assists learners to unlock words as quickly as possible should be used. Namely, phonics is without doubt the effective instruction that can give learners the power and independence to pronounce unfamiliar words.
2.1.3 Empirical Studies of Phonics Instruction in Taiwan EFL Context
According to Grades 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines for Elementary and Junior High School Education (Ministry of Education, 2008), phonics instruction is emphasized in Taiwanese English education. Therefore, many studies have shown that phonics instruction can assist EFL learners not only in pronunciation proficiency, but also in reading and spelling ability. The related studies about the effectiveness of phonics instruction can be discussed in the following sections.
(1) Benefits on Phonological Awareness
Based on Wu’s (2014) study and Chiu’s (2015) study, the experimental group had higher achievement on English word reading, oral fluency and changed their way of learning English.
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The training of phonics instruction and phonological awareness could facilitate students’
English capacity on sound-word correlation and accuracy on word pronunciation. Moreover, Wang (2014) mentioned that there was significant progress in the participants’ reading aloud and phonics awareness performance. Namely, the phonics instruction, along with synthetic phonics, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, sight words reading and letter-sound knowledge could improve students’ reading aloud and phonics awareness performance.
Besides, Kuo’s (2011) findings pointed out that the phonics instruction with songs, chants, and nursery rhymes has improved the participants’ phonemic and phonological awareness as well as their sight words reading ability.
(2) Benefits on Spelling Proficiency
Furthermore, according to Chiu (2015), Hsieh (2012) and Huang (2011) and Lai (2003), phonics curriculum could significantly improve students’ English writing and spelling abilities. In the aspect of learning methods, students could finally apply the letter-sound correspondence knowledge to spell words, instead of depending on visual impression to recognize words and whole-word memorization to spell words. Chen’s (2009) findings showed that the subjects also improved significantly in spelling tests including word-initial consonants spelling, word-middle vowels spelling and word-final consonants spelling. Lai (2003) suggested that phonics instruction could be integrated into the teaching of English spelling, especially for the remedial learners in the resource program. Also, some conditions should be considered in phonics teaching such as classroom setting, time tabling and class management.
(3) Benefits on Learning Motivation and Attitude
As for English learning attitude, some researchers Hsu (2015), Lin (2014) and Chang (2009) indicated that phonics instruction offered an appropriate instruction for teachers
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seeking to help students improve their English learning motivation. It also reinforced them to have a more positive attitude toward spelling words and learning English. That is, English letter-sound correspondences and phonological awareness should be taught in order to prevent students becoming poor readers. They can apply the given rules to overcome difficulties and acquire new words.
(4) Benefits on Remedial Instruction
In addition, previous studies (Chang, 2007; Chen, 2014; Lai, 2003; Lai, 2008) used the phonics approach as remedial instruction to teach EFL learners with English learning difficulties in order to promote their decoding and oral reading ability. The results showed that Phonics instruction appeared significant effects on improving the experimental group’s ability of phoneme segmentation and English word reading. Chang (2011) indicated that remedial students made great progress on orthography and word recognition. In particular, most of them have learned to employ the phonics rules to read and comprehend the assigned pictures.
Lai (2003) also found that phonics instruction embedded in the underachieving children’s literature successfully and boosted underachievers’ phonological awareness on early literacy skills, and their confidence in English learning. Wang (2014) and Lin (2014) emphasized that most remedial participants felt that they made progress on their reading aloud performance and phonics awareness performance and gained more motivated and confident in English when they could successfully decode the words by themselves.
However, as for classroom spelling instruction, some researchers have different opinions toward using phonics along with spelling instruction. Allred (1977) proposed that phonics had limitations, and complete reliance on phonics would cause lots of frustration and confusion in spelling, such as failing to write silent letters. Huang (2013) argued that in the implementation, some students with learning disabilities had difficulties in recognizing similar letters of the
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alphabet, and confused with some alphabet pronunciation. Consequently, it is appropriate to for English teachers to provide students with an effective and instructional phonics approach that can develop their sound-to-symbol knowledge and skills.