Impact of Phonological Awareness on the English Literacy of Grade 6 Pupils (Thesis Sample)

Chapter 1 The Problem and Its Background Introduction Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like 'money' and 'mother.' Yopp & Yopp (2009) define phonological awareness as “…sensitivity to the sound structure of language. It demands the ability to turn one’s attention to sounds in spoken language while temporarily shifting away from its meaning”. It is students understanding that speech is composed of words; words can be divided into syllables and onset-rimes; syllables and onset-rimes can be divided into individual sounds (phonemes). Mody (2003) reminds teachers that how speech is constructed is not necessarily obvious to listeners as it “…is a highly complex signal made up of coarticulated segments, with acoustic information for each segment (consonant or vowel) overlapping extensively with information from neighboring segments”. It is coming to an understanding about the segmental nature of speech by distinguishing and manipulating the sound structure of language (Suortti & Lipponen, 2013). It has been observed by the researcher that phonological awareness is an important determiner of success in learning to read and spell. For most children, strong readers have strong phonological awareness, and poor readers have poor phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness skills in the preschool and kindergarten years also strongly predict how well a child will read in the school years. In addition, interventions to improve phonological awareness abilities lead to significantly improved reading abilities. Phonological awareness instruction improves reading and spelling skills, but the reverse is also true: literacy instruction improves phonological awareness skills. The relationship between phonological awareness and reading abilities changes over time. All levels of phonological awareness ability (syllable, onset-rhyme, and phoneme) contribute to reading abilities in the Kindergarten through second grade. However, beyond the second grade, phoneme-level abilities play a stronger role. The last decade has brought a growing consensus on the range of skills that serve as the foundation for reading and writing ability (Dickinson & Neuman, 2006). To become a skilled reader, children need a rich language and conceptual knowledge base, a broad and deep vocabulary, and verbal reasoning abilities to understand messages that are conveyed through print. Children also must develop code- related skills, an understanding that spoken words are composed of smaller elements of speech (phonological awareness); the idea that letters represent these sounds ( the alphabetic principle), the many systematic correspondences between sounds and spellings and a repertoire of highly familiar words that can be easily and automatically recognized (McCardle & Chhabra, 2004). One realization of the researcher is that phonological awareness and literacy is often explained by decoding and encoding. In reading, decoding refers to the process of relating a word's written representation to its verbal representation. Especially in the early stages of reading, decoding involves mapping letters in the word to their corresponding sounds, and then combining those sounds to form a verbal word. Encoding: a process used in spelling: is similar, although the process goes in the opposite direction, with the word's verbal representation is encoded in a written form. Again, especially in the early stages of reading, encoding involves determining the sounds in a verbal word, and then mapping those sounds onto a letter sequence in order to spell out the written word. In both encoding and decoding, phonological awareness is needed because the child must know the sounds in the words in order to relate them to the letter sounds Another reflection of the researcher is that literacy, or the ability to read and write, is a fundamental skill that enables a person to achieve success in lifelong learning endeavors. For school-aged children, developing a comprehensive knowledge base of effective reading skills is the catalyst for high performance in all other subject areas, as it allows for the derivation of meaning and conceptual understanding from passages of text. The ability to read, however, is not a naturally occurring skill that emerges with developmental growth. This particular skill must be encouraged and elicited through purposeful instruction. The pre-reading period within early childhood years where the foundations of literacy are laid is critical, as it plays a considerable role in determining the outlook for a child’s success in academic efforts, and eventually, in the ability to be successful in life as members of modern society. Learning and understanding the sound structure of spoken words allows children to make sense of the alphabetic system and to learn sounds for letters (Baker, 2007). This will help children to use the letter/sound correspondence to begin reading and understanding the text. Most children with difficulties in reading have deficits in phonemic awareness skills (Phillips, 2008). Children with developmental delays often score far below their peers without these risk factors on early literacy skills. They often have difficulty distinguishing sounds in spoken language (Edwards, 2004). Lack of phonemic awareness skills acquisition has been found to be a predictor of risk for later reading failure (National Early Literacy Panel, 2006). In this study, the proponent would like to scrutinize the impact of phonological awareness on the English literacy among grade schoolers particularly in Grade 6. This will further corroborate with prior literatures and researches in relation to the gap being studied provided that this will be conducted in a different cultural milieu. Significance of the Study The findings may provide information beneficial to the following individuals: Pupils. The teacher’s guidance on the pupil’s English Literacy would have an impact on their performance. Eventually, such impact would be reflected to quality education. Teachers. The results of this study would enable them to attend to elementary school pupil’s problem in English learning. School Principals. The results would be helpful for them to be more guided on their roles with regards to the development of elementary student’s phonological awareness, reading literacy and pronunciation ability. Future Researchers. The findings of this study will also be beneficial to the future researchers for this will serve as good a source of literature for them. The findings of this study will help them identify possible gaps in the literature by looking at the differences in the findings, hence the need for another study. Theoretical/Conceptual Framework In finding the gap of the study, several literatures on phonological awareness have been identified by researchers as an essential link for reading skill development. By building upon the oral skills which students develop from early infancy, phonological awareness skill instruction allows students to attain a meaningful understanding of how to make connections between spoken words and written words in the progression of reading acquisition. The process begins as kindergarten teachers receive curriculum input based on state, or provincial curriculum expectations. Among the theories considered, Spear-Swerling, Brucker and Alfano (2005) posited the most relevant assumption in connection to this undertaking. The said proponents contended that knowledge about reading-related abilities and reading development is essential to effective reading instruction. For instance, one of the most important and well investigated abilities in early reading is phonological awareness, which involves children‘s sensitivity to sounds in spoken words, and is foundational for learning to read in an alphabetic language such as English .The phonological awareness knowledge that the teachers attain, or lack from these sources is utilized to develop their perceptions associated with the use and significance of this emergent reading skill. The perceptions, positive or negative, that teachers have regarding phonological awareness will influence the behaviors exhibited in the classroom practices. Research is lacking in relation to the perceptions which kindergarten teachers adhere to regarding the significance and use of phonological awareness another assumption deemed appropriate in this attempt was the assumption of McCombes-Tolis and Feinn (2008). They stated that research has yielded a growing body of empirical evidence to support a direct relationship between teachers’ knowledge and skills about essential components of effective literacy instruction and student literacy outcomes. Instructional behaviors that display a lack of the significance of phonological awareness can have a negative impact on early reading development as some students become potentially at risk of reading deficits. Lacking knowledge of English language structure, according to Spear-Swerling et al. (2005), can lead to the following: ―teachers may misinterpret assessments, choose inappropriate examples of words for instruction, provide unintentionally confusing instruction or give inappropriate feedback to children’s errors (pp. 267-268). For teachers’ behaviors to become more reflective of perceptions that support the significance and use of phonological awareness, these educators require a change in their perceptions. The study postulates that pupil’s phonological awareness significantly affects the English Literacy. This can be best explain using the illustration below.   Independent Variable Dependent Var...