The Effect of Teaching Phonology on Improving EFL Government School Students' Spelling

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The research in this thesis tackles the issue of government school EFL students' low achievement in spelling. It researches the effect of teaching the phonics lessons in the new English subject curriculum series Family and Friends that are used by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Bahrain for the primary level, on improving EFL students' spelling. Eighty grade six female government school students were randomly chosen to be the participants of this experimental study. Two phonics rules have been selected to be taught in the experiment and a list of ten words that contain the chosen rules was created to be used in the spelling assessment before and after teaching the phonics lessons. A pre-spelling test of those pre-selected words was given to the participants to assess their prior phonological knowledge and spelling skills. The test is a standard MOE spelling assessment with a standard correcting rubric. After analyzing the results and ascertaining the level of the problem, the chosen phonics lessons were taught once a week in a one-month period. Later, a post-test of the same list of words was given to the participants in order to analyze the new results and check whether or not learning the phonics lessons has helped students become better spellers. The results of the post-test have shown growth in students' grades and an improvement in their spelling skills. Students were more able to connect and comprehend the phoneme-grapheme relationship in spelling, have shown a better understanding of the rules behind the way words are heard-said and can relate those rules to the way words are spelled. This research has proven that the MOE's new approach of introducing phonics as a part of the curriculum in primary government EFL education has its use in helping students improve their spelling, with the right instructions given by teachers to help guide students make those links between phonics and spelling.