LEARNING PHONICS OR LEARNING WITH PHONICS?

Research Team:

School-based Curriculum Development (Primary) Section

Curriculum Development Institute
Education and Manpower Bureau

Tai Po Old Market Public School (Plover Cove)

Ms Ellce Li Yin Ping
Ms Carmen Pau Yuk Fong
Ms Chau Ka Ki
Ms Ho Wai Yee
Ms Wong Pui Mei
 School-based Curriculum Action Research Series
st
The 21 century marks the development of an information or knowledge society
with fast-changing needs and environment. In order to prepare our younger generation
for their future needs, schools, through constant endeavours in search of excellence,
have to provide students with different learning opportunities and experiences. In this
respect, the school curriculum should best be aligned with the social development as
well as the students’ interest.

Since 1998, the School-based Curriculum Development (Primary) Section

(SBCDP) has been collaborating with school teachers in curriculum development in
various Key Learning Areas. Building on the strengths and successful experiences
accumulated over the years, the Section has initiated action researches jointly with
teachers, aiming at empowering teachers to make informed decisions on curriculum
research and development.

Why Do We Promote School-based Curriculum Action Research?

Collaborative school-based curriculum action research aims to:

enable teachers to enhance quality learning and teaching through knowledge
generated and constructed in the process of critical and systematic inquiry into
different learning and teaching issues;
develop teachers' competence in curriculum development and research literacy as
well as their sense of curriculum ownership;
develop schools into learning organizations through collaborative team work
within schools and professional sharing in school networks.

How Do We Conduct Collaborative School-based Curriculum Action Research?

In the course of school-based curriculum development, teachers’ critical reflections

will help them identify issues worth addressing in the form of an action research. The
following steps illustrate the basic cycle in action research:

1. Examine critically learning- or teaching-related issues worth researching into

2. Define the research focus and review literature for current theories and practice
3. Develop action plans or intervention strategies
4. Implement action plans in contexts
5. Collect evidence and reflect on effectiveness of actions
6. Draw conclusions and use feedback to improve learning and teaching
7. Start a new cycle if necessary

As teachers progress through this spiral cycle, they improve their teaching
through continual reflection and move closer to the solution of the identified problems.
Taking the role as facilitator, Curriculum Development Officers from the SBCDP
Section work as partners with teachers, rendering professional support throughout the
research cycle, assisting them in reflecting and conceptualizing tacit knowledge
embedded in their practice.

How Can These Reports Be Used?

This series of action research reports portrays the participating teachers'

educational beliefs and philosophy, and the developmental pathway undertaken to
improve the school curriculum. The curriculum design, intervention strategies, action
plans, research tools and instruments, as well as the findings and recommendations
may be valuable references for teachers who intend to launch school-based curriculum
development and/or collaborative action research in their schools. We sincerely hope
that this series can serve as a platform to stimulate professional dialogue in curriculum
research and development, and to spark off a research culture in primary schools in
Hong Kong.

For comments and inquiries on the series, please contact

Mr. WUN Chi Wa, Ankey

Senior Curriculum Development Officer
School-based Curriculum Development (Primary) Section
Phone : (852)2762 0174
Fax : (852)2877 7954
Email : cwwun@ed.gov.hk
 CONTENTS

Page
Abstract
I. Background 1
II. Theoretical Basis 2
III. Methodology and Steps 4
IV. Our Questions and Answers 6
V. Looking Forward 22
References and Websites 23
Appendices i - iv
 LEARNING PHONICS OR LEARNING WITH PHONICS?

ABSTRACT

This is a collaborative action research done by five Primary 2 English teachers

(one of which is a seed teacher seconded to the SBCDP team) and a Curriculum
Development Officer during the academic year 2001-2002. The purpose was to
explore the teaching of phonics in Primary 2 and examine how students learn and use
such skills. Based on our experience captured in the previous research, the action
research project being undertaken focused more on the process of student learning.
Data were collected mainly through lessons observations, interviews and reflection
meetings among teachers.

During the learning/teaching process, teachers constantly reflected on their

teaching strategies and students’ learning; and made changes to their teaching as well
as understanding of students’ needs. All the teachers involved became more reflective
on the role of phonics in the English curriculum. More importantly, they recognized
the urgent need to elicit feedback from students’ learning, to explore how students
learned phonics more effectively and why. Whether students needed to apply phonics
skills in reading aloud and dictation were also explored and teachers learned that it
was essential to expose students to more reading experiences. It was also noted that
the design and requirements of dictation would have an important impact on the
students’ use of phonics skills in spelling. The most important thing was that teachers
learned to be more critical and flexible in teaching phonics. The report finally ends
with reiteration of our target: it is important that our students do not just learn phonics,
but learn with phonics as a meaningful tool.
I. Background

We started teaching phonics in the 2000-2001 school year and after one year’s
learning of phonics, our students have developed an awareness of letter-sound
relationship. They started to understand some of the basic skills of decoding sounds.
Towards the end of the last school term, they were more willing to try to sound out
new words. However, through observations and interviews, we noticed that most
students still had problems with segmenting and blending sounds. Their concept of
rhymes and word families was still confusing. The learning of individual sounds was
not a problem to most students but many of them still could not apply blending skill in
order to pronounce a word. We learnt that our students had to be equipped with both
the knowledge and skills in order to apply phonics in their own reading.

Though we have tried phonics teaching for one year and developed some
strategies, we realized that we focused too much on how we taught rather than on how
students learnt. As our first research report ‘Fat Cat Pat a Rat’ has illustrated, we
acquired basic understanding of the teaching of phonics and tried to integrate it into
our curriculum using different teaching strategies. Although we have set our direction
and developed our own approach, it turned out that we gathered little evidence on
student learning, an understanding of which should help us reflect and evaluate in a
more critical manner. Based on our experience captured in the previous research, the
action research project being undertaken in the 2001-2002 school year focuses more
on the process of student learning. We want to find out what teaching and learning
strategies we should adopt and how effective they are in catering for the needs of our
students. In short, we want to find out how we can facilitate students’ learning of
phonics and help them apply phonics skills in different areas like reading and spelling.
We hope that building on the experience we got in the past year, we can further
improve our teaching and have a better understanding of the role of phonics in the
curriculum. We hope that our students can really use phonics as a skill to solve
learning problems and read with more confidence. It is most important that our
students not only learn phonics as sounds, but also use phonics as a tool.

However, despite our intention to make this year’s attempt an extension of last
year’s experience, owing to some administrative reasons, there are three new teachers

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in our group this year, two of which are fresh graduates and new to the school. There
is only one experienced teacher who has gone through the curriculum development
process in the past two years. We need to work more slowly at the beginning and
revisit some of the basic concepts. To a certain extent, this research can be regarded
as a continuation of last year’s experience. More importantly, the research agenda
poses a reconsideration of phonics teaching to all the teachers involved.

The research aims to find out:

1. what strategies teachers can use to help students further develop phonics
skills and apply them actively in their learning;
2. whether the development of phonics skills can enhance students’
confidence and competence in reading as well as spelling.

II. Theoretical Basis

We agree with what is stated in the CDC syllabus for English Language (p.75)
that phonics skills ‘help learners to gain confidence and competence’ particularly in
areas like pronunciation, spelling and reading. With this belief, we explore the
different approaches of teaching phonics. According to Dombey & Moustafa (1998),
some approaches to teaching phonics are too simplistic; ‘they present reading as
essentially a decoding process, which consists of learning a system of letter-sound
relationships, translating symbols on the page into sounds, and synthesizing or
blending the sounds together into words’. This part-to-whole method is not effective.
As our experience during the past year has illustrated, we are more inclined to adopt
the whole-to-part approach which states clearly that ‘children are more likely to begin
with a repertoire of known words and proceed from wholes to parts’. We learn that
phonics learning should be related to other aspects of learning to read and must be a
part of learning to read. This has made learning more meaningful to both teachers and
students. Adams (1990) further reinforces the point that ‘children need practice in
seeing and understanding decodable words in real reading situations and with
connected text’ and phonics instruction should be ‘part of a reading program that
provides ample practice in reading and writing’. So, we do not just embark on phonics

2
teaching in our school, but design our school-based English curriculum in which
reading and phonics are an integral part.

Since phonics learning is dependent on the experience of reading, there are

important classroom implications. From Stahl (1992), we get some useful suggestions
on how phonics instructions are made: teachers should build on a child’s rich concepts
about print functions; build on a foundation of phonological awareness, integrate
phonics into a total reading programme; focus on reading words, not learning rules,
may include onsets and rimes etc. We are most impressed by the point that teachers
must build on the solid foundations of what children already know and give them
space to see patterns and draw inferences. So, we have to examine first what our
students know already and where they should start. It is also important that we teach
phonics in context.

Regarding the teaching strategies, it is suggested that phonics teaching should

be early, systematic, clear and direct, frequently practiced and applied, meaningful,
and integrated with other word-identification skills into an effective word-recognition
skills. Most phonological skill instruction can be embedded within the context of
meaningful reading or writing (Wadington, 2000; Yopp, 1992). Therefore, how to
integrate the teaching of phonics into our curriculum and explore what strategies we
can use in order to teach phonics effectively and help students apply the skills in
reading actively are our major concerns.

In this sense, phonics is a means to an end, not an end in itself. So, in this
project, in the process of helping students develop phonics skills, we would relate
phonics teaching to all reading activities adopting the whole-to-part approach.
Children’s previous knowledge, their reading experiences from textbooks and big
books or small readers are all considered as a whole integratively in the design of the
phonics teaching. In the process, we would try to give our students ample
opportunities to internalize phonics formation through using them. We would explore
ways of designing systematic, contextual and meaningful phonic instruction and try
out the teaching of phonics effectively to enhance students’ competence and
confidence in reading. Most important of all, we would explore how our students

3
learn phonics and how they can use it as an effective tool to solve their learning
problems such as spelling and reading aloud.

III. Methodology and Steps

For this research, a target group with 2 students from each class in P2 was
involved. An interview and a reading test (Appendix I) on the students’ mastery of
sounds, their confidence in sounding out words and their competence in reading aloud
were conducted in the first term to find out our students’ confidence level and how
much they knew. The same test was conducted again towards the end of the second
term to measure students’ change in performance and confidence level. Some open-
ended questions were asked to seek students’ views on their learning of sounds, their
learning experience in English and their confidence in reading. Students’ oral
presentations during the learning/teaching process were also recorded as the evidence
of learning and improvement.

Teachers conducted observations during the process of teaching to check and

note down students’ progress, their problems and evaluate instructional strategies.
Peer observations and constant sharing were also held to enrich our knowledge of
student learning and evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching strategies. There
were chances for teachers to review the lessons together and write journals to reflect
on teaching and share the impressive episodes. All such data helped to elicit more in-
depth analysis and provide insight for improvement.

Besides observations and interviews which provided qualitative data on

student learning, formal assessment on students’ phonics skills and reading aloud
were built into the oral examination paper in both terms. Such quantitative data of all
students’ performance could serve as triangulation and inform us of students’ progress
in developing phonics skills.

4
Schedule of the research

Time Action
July 2001 do literature review, explore materials and discuss
focuses;
August 2001 set learning targets and focuses of teaching, discuss
the aims of research;
September 2001 plan teaching schedule and phonics instruction;
October 2001 refine the aims of research;
decide on the research methodology and target group,
design the research instruments;
October–December 2001 discuss and start teaching phonics using different
resources and methods;
conduct observations during the course of teaching;
conduct test /interview on target group;
conduct oral examination
January 2002 collect teachers’ journals /conduct interview with
teachers;
February 2002 data analysis & first phase evaluation;
refocus the research & plan the second phase teaching;
try out different methods to teach phonics;
conduct observations during the course of teaching;
March 2002 teachers write journals;
March--May 2002 conduct phonics and reading aloud tests with the
target group;
conduct oral examination;
conduct interview with teachers;
June – July 2002 data analysis and report drafting.

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IV. Our Questions and Answers

A. How far should phonics learning be integrated with other parts of the
curriculum?
In the first year, we did not have much idea about curriculum integration. With
the belief that we should relate phonics learning to students’ learning in other areas
like the textbook, we started to choose the sounds from the textbook first. We also
tried to help students revise and apply the sounds we taught through small readers or
big book shared reading. We found that students learnt better and could make analogy
more easily with the words they knew already. In the second year, as the students’
prior knowledge increased, we had more room in choosing the sounds and skills and
we thought that we could then go beyond the textbook. Other than the textbook, we
made use of all materials and opportunities to teach phonics in meaningful contexts
and activities. For example, in the module ‘Connecting with the Natural World’,
students learnt to tell the days of the week and wrote diaries about their activities as
well as their feelings. When we introduced the big book ‘Every Monday’, the rimes of
‘ay’ and ‘ate’ were taught since they appeared many times. Students could associate
the ‘ay’ sounds with the days of the week and they were encouraged to produce more
words with the ‘ate’ rime such as ‘hate’, ‘late’ and ‘plate’. Students then wrote their
diaries in which they had the chance to use the words they learnt in the process. When
they presented their diaries, they could use the phonics skills for producing the related
words as well. For instance, the students used words like `Monday’, `days’, `hate’
when they wrote about their activities and feelings. They could pronounce these
words very well as they had learnt these rimes before. This was an example of how
phonics learning was integrated in the reading programme as well as writing and
presentation tasks. When we designed the teaching materials, we would consider the
expected learning outcomes and try to explore possible ways to enrich the input. We
also learnt how to connect learning in a meaningful manner through this process. Such
process requires very careful planning and preparation. While realizing the
importance of linking different parts of learning to form a whole, we need to be
really flexible and allow enough room for both teachers and students as they
have different needs.

6
 Teaching the big book ‘Every Monday’ and focusing on the rime ‘ay’

I play basketball after school

every Monday.
Can you think of any other
words that end with ‘ay’ ?
tray, day, May…

1. Major problems we faced when we tried to integrate phonics teaching into

our curriculum:
Integrating different elements in the curriculum to achieve a meaningful
whole was a very demanding task for us. As there were new teachers in
our group and many of us did not have any training in phonics teaching
before, we needed to develop experience in curriculum planning and
teaching phonics again. At the beginning of the academic year, the new
teachers regarded phonics as an isolated part of the curriculum and the
focus was on producing sounds as they were. The focus was always on
phonics as knowledge but not on applying phonics skills. So, it was very
difficult for all of us to agree on how phonics was related to other aspects
of learning and whether it could be used as a meaningful tool for learning.

We did not have adequate exposure to different teaching ways of teaching

and materials. Starting from last year, we began to add other materials
like big books and small readers into our curriculum and tried to use the
textbooks more flexibly to suit our purpose. However, we still found it
difficult and we failed to see possibilities beyond the materials we had at
hand. This was also a big problem for our new members this year as they

7
 used to rely on textbooks very heavily. We had to struggle hard to release
ourselves from textbook-bound practice.

2. How we tried to tackle the problems:

We realized that we could not wait until all the problems had been solved
before we started. We had to learn by doing. However, this process had
been quite disturbing to some of us. One of the new colleagues reflected
that she had great doubt on whether integration would work or not at the
beginning of the term since she was not trained in this way. She was more
a follower then. However, after trying out for one term, she noticed that
her students learnt quite well in such an integrated curriculum. They could
put their phonics skills into practice in shared reading and vocabulary
building activities when we designed that application followed learning,
like the one on diary writing. Learning became a meaningful whole to
students and they could well see the relationship. It was the students’
performance which had changed her mind. In other words, as teachers, we
learned to be more open-minded and keep on observing students,
reflecting critically, adapting our strategies and trying to check that we
were on the right track.

The skills and sounds we wanted to introduce in P2 became more

complicated and therefore it was difficult for us to use a single chapter or
story to cope with a particular sound or skill. We had to look for different
resources. We were willing to have greater exposure to various teaching
materials and different teaching strategies, but we had our limitations in
time and resources. The Curriculum Development Officer (CDO) from
Curriculum Development Institute really helped a lot in bringing in
resources and ideas. Through her, we had invaluable chances to share the
experiences of some schools. Based on what other schools have done, we
developed our own ideas and materials for our students. Through this
process, we have developed a strong partnership among colleagues,
collaboration with the CDO and a better link with different schools.

8
 Sharing problems and suggestions in the meetings

During the process, we

As a start, how can I designed the materials
integrate phonics into and solved the problems
the curriculum? I together. I noticed that
really have no idea on my students tried to
this. And how apply phonics skills in
effective will it be? reading. They really
used it to tackle their
problems in learning.

Considering our students’ background, their needs and the teaching

effectiveness during these two years, we further affirm that phonics learning should be
integrated into the English curriculum. It should not be just a set of separate
worksheets exerting extra burden to both students and teachers. It should not be
singled out as separate phonics lessons. Students’ prior knowledge and their repertoire
of words should be used as the starting point of phonics teaching so that students can
make analogy and learn sounds more effectively. The materials we use for teaching
phonics like big books and small readers are those we are already using in our
teaching process and they are integrated with the textbooks. This provides students
with more opportunities to practise and apply the skills more frequently and more
effective learning is enhanced. An example of how different elements are integrated in
one module is presented as follows and the description of the learning process is
included in Appendix II:

An example
of how
different
elements are
integrated in
one module
Textbook:
New
Welcome to
English Bk
2B

9
B. How Important is Assessment on Phonics Teaching and Learning?
1. Feedback from students on phonics learning
We started to link up teaching, learning and assessment and build in the
phonics assessment both informally and formally last year. For instance, we
conducted interviews with the Primary 1 students (2000-01) and we found that
students were good at making the individual sounds but weak in blending the
sounds and syllabification. The examination result reflected the same problem. So,
we tried to shift the focus to blending and syllabification. Since it was already
April 2001, we did not have much time left for teaching. However, such
information collected from assessment was useful for further planning. Learning
from experience, we conducted our first interview with the Primary 2 students
much earlier this year, sometime towards the end of October 2001. We discovered
that the students forgot lots of the sounds they learnt last year. To solve the
problem, we helped the students revisit the sounds and skills learnt in P.1. We
realized that constant revision and more importantly, constant application was
most essential to help students really remember and use the sounds they had
learnt before.

We also conducted post-interview, formative and summative assessment to

measure our students’ progress. We confirmed that the interviews could help us
collect more information and better understanding about phonics learning.
Through the data we collected from the target students, we could have a better
understanding of the students’ learning problems. For instance, we found that in
the post-interview, most students had problems with reading unfamiliar words
because they lacked adequate exposure. Their repertoire of words was still too
small for them to make analogy, which is the skill for students to ‘perceive
patterns between related phenomena, and interpret further examples by reference
to these patterns’ (Dombey, H, 1998). For instance, children who are aware of the
pattern shared by ‘call’ and ‘ball’ can then recognise and work out the sound ‘tall’.
The following extract from the reading aloud assessment of a very weak student
illustrates a very good example:

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 Student A: (reading ‘Jo Jo’s New Bicycle’) …… This he (It has) a
red s… (seat) and a yellow b… nor (bell) and a
green … (horn)… and … … (blue wheels). Bo Bo (Jo
Jo) … cleans his (her) bicycle… and … (rides) it a…
(around) the …… (garden).

Despite that fact that this was a very weak and timid student,
he did apply some phonics skills in his reading and we were
pleased with his attempt. He uttered sounds he recognised like ‘s’,
‘b’ and ‘a’. However, he had never seen any words like ‘seat’,
‘bell’ and ‘round’ before as his reading experience was too limited.
So, he could just stop with the first sound and there was no way for
him to construct analogies. In comparison, the better students who
managed to read more stood a much better chance of sounding out
all these relatively unfamiliar words.

So we realized that it was more important for us to expose our students to

more reading texts and enlarge their vocabulary. The interview and the test have
helped us to observe our students in a more critical way. The findings probably do
not just lead to celebration of success as they reveal more often our students’
learning problems. But it is exactly through this process that we can consider our
students’ learning more deeply and develop strategies to improve learning.

11
 The following diagram illustrates our learning, teaching and assessment cycle:

Learning & Teaching

☺ Restructure the modules
☺ Enrich learning with
interesting storybooks & big
books
☺ Integrate phonics into the
curriculum

Assessing Students’ Progress in

Class (formative) Revising Teaching Focus &
☺ Conduct class observation Strategies
☺ Record students’ performance ☺ Provide students with
opportunities in reading
☺ Encourage peer observations &
aloud
discussions
☺ Reinforce students’ concept
☺ Take note of different learning styles
of onsets & rimes
and students’ learning difficulties
☺ Try different ways to teach
☺ Collect evidence of learning e.g.
the blending skill
students’ work & presentations

Assessing Students’ Progress

Assessing Students’ Progress in
(formative)
school exam (summative) ☺ Interview students & assess
☺ Assess students’ phonics skills their phonics skills
☺ Assess students’ skill in ☺ Use the running records to
reading aloud check students’ competence
☺ Take note of pupils’ & confidence in reading aloud
performance (strengths & ☺ Review impact on learning &
weaknesses) teaching
☺ Collect feedback for further
planning

From such feedback cycle, we have the following observations:

When we design the teaching materials, we have to consider the
students’ prior knowledge as well as what they have forgotten already.
Helping students to revisit what they have learnt and building on their
prior knowledge is essential. Actually, we have started to design our
learning materials in such a manner. We have a better understanding

12
 of the ‘learning---forgetting---re-learning process’ and make it a
very important consideration in our teaching programme.
We have to adjust the language items and enrich the input in order to
make sure that the students have adequate stimuli and they can use
what they have learnt in authentic and meaningful ways. We are
convinced that our students need to have more exposure and
enlarge their vocabulary so that they can use analogy in sounding
out unfamiliar words.
We have a much better understanding of the relationship between
learning, teaching and assessment and we have put it into practice.
Assessment takes place all the time either formally or informally
and we keep using information from assessment to improve
learning and teaching.

C. How do our students respond to phonics learning?

1. Which ways of learning do they prefer?
Songs, shared reading, poem recital,
reading aloud and oral presentations are some of
the interesting and effectively ways in phonics
learning. Some children, however, require more
practice to reinforce their skills. Students of very
low reading ability benefit most from explicit
Students enjoy sharing their work with
instruction in phonological skills paired with their friends and they are motivated to
speak clearly in front of the audience
explicit instruction in how to apply those skills including their classmates and teachers.
in a meaningful context (Cunningham, 1990;
Lane, 1994). During the lessons, we demonstrated to students how to blend
sounds with actions and invited students to come out, blend sounds to pronounce
the words and tell the class clearly how they did it. From the interviews, we
learnt that the students found such explicit instruction we used in blending very
useful and they turned out to be quite competent in such skills.

We collected the students’ responses towards the learning of phonics and

the following revealed some of their preferences:

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 A little girl in our target group said,

“I prefer to say the sounds individually rather than following the

whole class when practising the blending skill because my teacher can
hear me clearly and correct my mistakes immediately.”
Would you like to try?

cr…ab, crab.

From class observations, we found that two teachers Kai Kei and Carmen
provided many chances for the students to practice individually and the
students were very attentive since everyone had the chance to say the sound
and the teacher listened to each of them carefully. In order to enhance
students’ participation in class, we had more pair work and group activities so
that everyone could join in and have more chances to practise the sounds. The
weaker students learned from the brighter classmates and this helped them to
differentiate the sounds and produce them more accurately. We believe that
practice does help to give more individual attention to the weaker
students and help them learn better.

You say the

sound and
I’ll write it
down……

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 Some students from the target group expressed the following
responses towards learning of phonics:

“I enjoy using the cards to blend the sounds since this helps me
learn more new words. I find it interesting.”

I forget how to pronounce the word ‘hen’ but I know how to

read ‘pen’ and the sound of letter ‘h’. So I can substitute ‘p’ with ‘h’
and read the word ‘hen’.”

According to the teachers’ observations, if students are asked to revise the

individual sounds of the onsets and rimes only, they would feel bored and there is
not enough challenge. So we should give them new words with the onsets and
rimes they have learnt and ask them to blend the sounds and pronounce the words.
When students can revise the sounds, apply the blending skill and learn new
words while they are playing, they definitely find it more challenging and
more interesting. They can learn much better this way too. We find that most
students are more confident and competent in blending sounds and pronouncing
new words in the interviews. That is a very encouraging sign to all of us.

We also notice that the weaker students in the target group share a very
common problem: they do not know enough words to make analogy. They need
more support with some hints on the familiar words so that they can associate
the new words with those they know already. Besides, the weaker ones tend to
lack confidence in trying to sound out new words and they need to be encouraged
from time to time.

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D. When do the students need to apply phonics skills?
Our ultimate goal is to help the students learn with phonics as a tool so that
they can read and spell words. We find that our students have the greatest problem
with reading and spelling and these have been the major obstacles to their language
learning. We do expect that with the learning of phonics, our students can improve in
these areas and become more confident language learners. However, after two years’
experience, we realize that a lot more considerations have to be given before this can
happen.

1. Reading aloud
Students’ performance in reading aloud has confirmed that phonics skills can
help them read the words they do not know and most students are more willing to
try sounding out words. Students reflected that they found phonics useful when
they came across new words while reading stories. To find out our students’
progress in reading aloud, we asked the target group to read an unseen passage in
October 2001 and in May 2002 during the pre and post interviews. We found that
the average numbers of words that the students did not try were 8 out of 33 and 2
out of 33 in the pre and post interviews respectively. As we observed during the
post interview, the students applied the blending skill to sound out the words like
‘seat’, ‘wheel’ and ‘around’. Some of them could not pronounce the words
accurately but they were good at making the beginning sounds (as illustrated by
Student A) and blending some sounds on their own. Their major problem was that
their repertoire of words was too small. Our students did not have enough words
to make analogy and so accuracy was still a very big problem. The data and our
observations have indicated that the students become more confident in
sounding out unfamiliar words while reading but they still need to enlarge
their vocabulary and have better exposure to more reading experiences in
order to improve their reading aloud. So, we are more convinced and ready to
enrich the reading inputs in our curriculum, and we try to provide students with as
many opportunities to read as possible as this is the most effective way they learn
how to read.

16
 The story students read aloud in the tests:

Jo Jo’s New Bicycle

Jo Jo has a new bicycle.

It has a red seat and a yellow bell

and a green horn and blue wheels.

Jo Jo cleans her bicycle…

and rides it around the garden.

(adapted from ‘Jo Jo Goes to the Beach’ by

Lorraine Lee, Little Readers Series Level 1
Book 1)

2. Dictation
We expect phonics to help students in dictation all along. However, in the
post interview, many students stated that they do not apply phonics in dictation
although they agreed that phonics could help them in spelling. We pursued
further into this issue and found that our students were still using the old method
of memorizing all the words they needed to know when they prepared for their
dictation. It was because all these words were familiar to them and they felt safer
to memorize them by heart. It was what they and their parents had been doing all
along and they could manage quite well. So, the students did not feel the need to
apply phonics in dictation. The following student told us how she prepared for
dictation in the interview:

Teacher : Do you use your phonics skills in preparing for

dictation?
Student B: No. There is no need to do that.
Teacher : What do you do then?
Student B: I just memorize the words. If I forget, I will try to
remember where I see them.

17
 To test how phonics could help in spelling, we asked another student who
thought phonics could not help in dictation to spell the words ‘chop’ and ‘mop’.
He gave us the correct spelling very quickly. Obviously, he blended the ‘ch’ and
‘op’ sounds into the word ‘chop’ since he knew both the digraph ‘ch’ and rime
‘op’. He then demonstrated to us that he knew ‘op’ and so combining the
beginning sound ‘m’ which he knew very well, he pronounced ‘mop’ very
accurately and confidently. The interesting thing was he did not know the word
‘mop’ and what it meant at all. He was only applying his phonics skills in the
process. He then noticed that he could spell the new word by applying phonics
skills without having to study and memorize it. In our evaluation, we share that
whether the students can use phonics skills in dictation depends on how we
organize the dictation content. It is important that we design dictation in such a
manner that we provide our students with the chances to spell the words without
having to memorize them.

We also observed that the students used the phonics skills when they forgot
the spelling or when they had unseen dictation. They tried to listen to the teacher
and extract the sounds they knew and then jotted down the similar words. For
example, some students forgot the word ‘hamburger’. They listened to what the
teacher read but they have not learnt the ‘ur’ sound. They tried to use another
letter to replace ‘u’. They wrote ‘hamberger’ instead of ‘hamburger’. They could
not spell the word correctly but they demonstrated their effort in applying
phonics skills when they were required to do so.”

We noticed another interesting phenomenon. We have just started to

introduce phonics to our P.4 students in the second term. Margaret, one of the
teachers in our team, taught P.4 English at the same time. Once she had dictation
with her P.4 class, the students requested her to read slowly so that they could
hear the sounds of the words clearly in order to spell the words. Margaret also
noticed that the P.4 students could use the words they knew to make analogy
even though they have not been taught to do so. She observed that the P.4
students acquired phonics skills more quickly when comparing with her P.2
students. We reflected that it might be because our P4 students have a richer
vocabulary to draw analogy, they are more mature learners and they have a

18
 greater need to use phonics to tackle the words they do not know. This leads us
to reconsider this question: when should we start the teaching of phonics and
how ready are our students to learn phonics effectively?

We conclude that the design and requirements of dictation would have

an important impact on students’ use of phonics skills in spelling. How to
help students apply phonics in spelling and design dictation to enhance this need
must be explored further. We have to redesign our dictation so that we require
students to really use the phonics skills to spell the words they have not come
across before (like those in the unseen dictation or sound game) or when there
are too many words they have to spell and mere memorization becomes quite
impossible. In that case, they have to use phonics skills actively in the
preparation and production process. Of course, we have to be careful in
designing the dictation and consider our students’ ability. How to design tasks or
dictation, which require students to use the skills actively and provide suitable
challenge to them, is our major concern in the next stage.

E. How do we perceive phonics learning after two years’ experience?

1. Phonics cannot solve all the reading problems
Phonics can help students read fluently and accurately to a certain extent.
However, there are many exceptional cases (for instance, students cannot apply
phonics in reading the words ‘the’ or ‘pilot’) and so it is difficult for the students
to apply the skills when the rules do not apply. In the reading test, our students
performed poorly in reading out the high frequency vocabulary (or sight
vocabulary) like ‘the’, ‘has’, ‘her’ etc. As Student A has demonstrated, he could
not read ‘it’, ‘has’ and ‘her’ correctly. The training in phonics fails to help the
students read these words because these cannot be worked out through phonics
alone. ‘While phonics skills can be used to identify printed words, many
frequently used words are not phonically regular; these words must be recognized
accurately and quickly’ (Pikulski, 2002). According to Mikulecky and Jeffries
(1997), there are ‘100 words’ which we see very often when we read in English
and good readers should know them very well, read them very quickly and do not
have to stop and think. The list includes words like ‘are’, ‘be’, ‘has’, ‘have’, ‘he’,
‘her’, ‘him’, ‘it’, ‘is’, ‘in’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘the’, ‘their’, ‘them’, ‘they’, ‘these’, ‘who’,

19
‘what’ etc. So, in order to improve the students’ reading aloud, we realize that we
have to teach them read the more important high frequency vocabulary.
Decodable books for practice with high frequency words and words that include
previously taught phonic elements should be chosen as far as possible. We need to
take all these into consideration in our teaching plan in the future. Besides, to help
students read effectively, we should draw the students’ attention to other skills in
reading aloud and spelling such as stress, intonation, feeling (reading with
meaning) and some spelling rules. So, the learning of phonics should include a
greater variety of reading skills and activities, all of which should be planned and
arranged in a purposeful manner.

2. Teaching has to be adjusted all the time to help students learn better
It is important that teachers have to put theories into practice, try things out
and evaluate students’ learning from time to time. We find that we have to really
study the students’ problems and seek alternative ways to help students learn
better. For instance, we planned to teach the consonant blend ‘fl’ but we found
that students had problem in sounding out ‘flat’. They tended to drop the ‘l’
sound and read the word as ‘fat’. So, instead of asking students to blend ‘fl’ and
‘at’ (which was our original way of teaching), we asked students to read ‘lat’ first,
then added the sound ‘f’ to ‘lat’. By adjusting and exploring different ways of
teaching, we found that the students could pronounce the word ‘flat’ more
correctly. We understood that this might not be the only way or the ‘best’ way in
teaching the ‘fl’ sound. However, in our experience, this was how our students
learned and this worked for them. To find out how our students learn more
effectively in areas of consonant clusters is the biggest lesson we have learned
here.

The learning of phonics should include knowledge as a start and then

proceed to the skills acquisition and application when students are more ready.
After the students have mastered the basic knowledge of letter-sound relationship
and acquired the individual sounds quite well, we feel that more effort should be
spent on helping students apply phonics skills in reading and spelling. The
focuses can be on the blending skills. As we develop more knowledge of phonics
teaching, we feel that it is really important for teachers to develop a better

20
understanding of how students learn and use phonics and then adopt suitable
strategies to enhance students’ use of phonics.

3. Active learning and application are most essential

In order to make phonics a meaningful tool for learning, ample
opportunities for students to apply the skills should be provided. In this sense,
phonics learning should be connected with shared reading, poem recital, reading
aloud and oral presentations so that students can use phonics skills in various
occasions. Once students have mastered phonics as an active skill, there is no
need to teach them every sound and students should be able to learn on their own.
At the early stage, we tried to help the students apply the blending skill by
leading them to sound out the onsets and rimes and blend the separate sounds
into words. Teachers always took the lead and students followed quite well and
we were quite satisfied at that stage. We expected that the students should be
able to blend the sounds on their own then. However, we noticed that when the
students came across new words in a passage, they would just stop and wait for
help even though they knew the onsets and rimes and were capable of blending
the sounds. It was the attitude which mattered. The students simply did not apply
the skills out of their own accord and they adopted a passive attitude in reading.
Maybe they lacked the confidence and we seldom gave them opportunities to
practice the skill actively. We reflected on our teaching and decided that we
should provide the students with the challenges which force them to master and
apply the skills actively on their own. Rather than taking the lead in separating
and blending the onsets and rimes all the time, we would let the students try all
the steps themselves.

Since phonics teaching is new to us, there is still a lot to learn before we can
gather more knowledge and experience to make phonics learning really effective.
Many problems have been identified in the process and it is still difficult for us to
see how phonics can be related to other aspects of learning in a meaningful
manner. However, when we are open-minded, keep observing, evaluating the
students’ learning, reflecting critically and adapting teaching strategies to suit the
students’ needs, it is easier to find the right direction and we do become wiser

21
 and more effective teachers eventually. That is the greatest satisfaction we have
achieved in the whole process.

V. Looking Forward
As we have tried teaching phonics for two years, we find that the students
have different needs at different stages. Very young kids have to take a longer time to
master the sounds and skills as they have limited vocabulary and exposure. More
mature students like those in P.4 on the other hand can learn and use phonics much
more quickly and effectively. They have better ability to make analogy among
different sounds or words. Besides, whether we can provide opportunities for students
to learn and apply phonics actively in different occasions makes a big difference in
the students’ learning effectiveness. So, we feel that we need to know more about the
impact of students’ age, cognitive level and repertoire of words on the learning of
phonics. With more knowledge of these areas as well as the students’ ways of learning,
we hope that we can plan our teaching of phonics more effectively in the future. After
these two years, our target is much clearer: it is important that our students do not
just learn phonics, but learn with phonics as a meaningful tool. However, how to
make this happen remains the biggest challenge to us and we guess it will be a never-
ending task.

22
References

Cheyney, W., & Cohen, E. J. (1999). Focus on phonics: Assessment and instruction.
U.S.A.: Wright Group.

Curriculum Development Council (1997). Syllabuses for primary schools: English

language (Primary 1-6). Hong Kong: The Education Department.

Dombey, H. et al. (1998). Whole to part phonics. London: Centre for Language in
Primary Education.

Harrison , C. (1996). Methods of teaching reading: Key issues in research and

implications for practice. Interchange, 39, 1-11.

Lloyd, S. (1994) (2nd ed.). The phonics handbook: A handbook for teaching reading,
writing and spelling. Chigwell: Jolly Learning Ltd.

Mikulecky, B. S. & Jeffries, L. (1997). Basic reading power: pleasure reading,

comprehension skills, vocabulary building, thinking skills. White Plains, N.Y.:
Longman

Miller, W. (2000). Strategies for developing emergent literacy. Boston: Mcgraw Hill
Higher Education.

SchifferDanoff, V. (1997). Pocket charts for emergent readers. New York: Scholastic
Professional Books.

Strickland, D. S. (1998). Teaching phonics today: A primer for educators. Newark:

International Reading Association.

23
Websites
Curtis, J. (1997). Phonics vs. whole language: Which is better? Retrieved from
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/reading/phonics.shtml

Lemann, N. (1997). The reading wars. Atlantic Monthly, November 1997.

Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97nov/read.htm

Pikulski, J.J. (1998). The role of phonics in the teaching of reading: A Houghton
Mifflin position paper. Retrieved from
http://www.eduplace.com/Ids/article/phonics.html

Ruth, S. S. (2000). Helping your child learn to read: Phonics and words.
Retrieved from http://www.mycinnamontoast.com/reading2.htm

Sansing, L. Phonics or whole language. Retrieved from

http://www2.tamucc.edu/~edtech/summer.5310.1998/lsansing/webpage.htm

Weaver, C. (1997). Phonics in whole language classrooms.

Retrieved from http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/phonics.html

(1997). Just say 'know' to whole language.

Retrieved from http://www.freedomparty.org/whole_07.htm

(1994). The language pack step-by-step plan: Checklist I. The Longman book project.
UK: Longman Group UK Ltd.
Retrieved from http://www.longman.co.uk/bkproject

(1997). Whole language and phonics: Can they work together?

Retrieved from http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr029.shtml

24
Appendix I
5. Do the words rhyme?

Assessment on students’ phonics skills and reading aloud 1st 2nd 1st 2nd
sat, cat lamp, land
stall, tall pin, pan
Name: ________________ Class: _____________ Date: ________________
*Give brief reasons
A. Phonics skills:
6. Clap your hands each time you hear a syllable:
1. Can you say the sounds?
1st 2nd 1st 2nd
1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd eagle easter(2) radio (3)

s / t r l y pear (1) spaceman(2)

sh ch pl th
7. Find the word in the second column that is in the same family as the words in the
a air ay op ake 1st 2nd column 1 column 2
day tray play dad tram may
2. Can you say the words: chop pop top shop chap pot
1st 2nd 1st 2nd hair pair chair hire pail fair

(w＋in) w＋ay sh＋in * Please indicate the choice of the student.

8. Write another word in the same word family and say it.
s＋at r＋an
1st 2nd 1st 2nd
make lake mall tall
3. When you hear the word, please tell me the beginning sound of the word.
hen pen sun bun
1st 2nd 1st 2nd
(sun) sand dot
9. Can you say these words?
chin clean
1st 2nd
toy change t to s
4. When you hear the word, please tell me the final sound of the word.
kite change k to b
1st 2nd 1st 2nd
ship change sh to ch
pot shop
coat change c to fl
kind ink
* Please indicate the sound(s) students produce.

i
B. Reading aloud C. Open questions:
1. What strategies have the teachers used in teaching phonics?

Jo Jo has a new bicycle. 老師用過什麼方法教拼音?

It has a red seat…and a yellow bell…

and a green horn…and blue wheels.

2. Which strategies are effective? Why?
Jo Jo cleans her bicycle… 你認為哪些方法有效? 為什麼?

and rides it around the garden.

Teachers’ comment (student’s confidence, attitude, strengths, weaknesses, skills

applied etc...) 3. What have you learnt in phonics learning?
在學習拼音時, 你學到什麼?
_____________________________________________

_____________________________________________
4. When do you apply the phonics skills?
Duration：( ) minutes 你什麼時候會運用學到的拼音技巧?
Running words : ________
Errors: ________
Self corrections: ________
Error rate: ________

ii
Appendix II
An example of curriculum restructuring & integration ----- from input to output to help students read for information paying special attention to the
time and activities. It was hoped that students could read with a
Topic: “My diary” (from module 2, Bk 2B)
purpose. Students were expected to learn how to write about their
daily activities with all such inputs. Mini-tasks were provided to help
a. Considerations: enriching inputs for different purposes
students master and apply the language learned. After that, two big
Bk 2B Module 2 : Connecting with the natural world
books ‘What’s the time?’ and ‘Every Monday’ were shared to
Textbook: (for equipping students with necessary language, content
provide enjoyment and stimulate students so that they could start
and context)
thinking about their own dream timetable. Students were encouraged
Small readers: (for enjoyment and reinforcement of learning
to share their dream timetable with their classmates so that they could
regarding language and ideas; for appreciation and eliciting personal
learn from each other.
response, with target words selected particularly to help students
In unit 6 ‘Our week’, students learned about days of the week. ‘All
reinforce and apply phonics skills in meaningful contexts)
through the week with cat and dog’ and ‘Winnie and the cat’ were
Big books: (for enjoyment and enrichment of experiences)
very stimulating stories with events structured around the days of the
Supplementary worksheets: (for reinforcement of language learning,
week. These two books were shared so as to expose students to
stimulation of ideas and training of skills)
different ways of presenting activities and funny imaginative ideas. A
worksheet on ‘Winnie and the cat’ was designed to enhance students’
b. The teaching/learning process:
understanding and appreciation of the story. With such inputs,
In Unit 5 ‘Our day’, students first learned from the textbook how to
students were expected to choose and describe some special activities
tell the time and describe habitual events using the simple present
happened to them during the week.
tense. A worksheet on ‘Miss Ducky’s Busy Day’ was used to enrich
In units 7 & 8, students learned about weather, seasons and clothes.
students’ vocabulary on different activities. Then a small reader ‘The
They acquired the essential vocabulary and language patterns from
Busy Giant’ was shared with students and a worksheet was designed
the textbook. ‘What’s the weather like today?’ and ‘Weather

iii
 Machine’ were shared with students for reinforcement of the diary writing. Students’ diaries demonstrated that they could use a
vocabulary and language patterns learnt. ‘Weather Machine’ was an variety of language patterns (other than those in the textbook)
imaginative story which could further stimulate students to develop effectively for self-expression and they had different interesting ideas
ideas and express feelings. Students were expected to learn how to because of the rich inputs they had got in the teaching process. The
plan activities according to the weather conditions and add these students also showed that they could read for meaning and apply
elements in their diary. what they had learnt in the writing task. Many students began to
To help students master the essential language patterns they had to organize their ideas and present them in their own style.
use in this module, grammar worksheets on ‘wh-words’, prepositions, Most students showed the motivation and ability to write about their
telling the time and vocabulary exercises were designed for students own activities and express feelings. There were great variations in the
at appropriate times. students’ diaries. The teachers assessed students’ work according to
Throughout the process, teachers had prepared 4 pieces of the their use of language, ideas, skills and attitude. Throughout the
teacher’s diary to help students learn the format and style of writing process, the teachers gave feedback on the students’ diaries and the
diaries. They were also used to develop students’ reading skills like students were willing to make response and improve.
scanning for specific information. Rather than models for students to
follow, these diaries aimed at providing a framework and stimulating
students so that they could use language to express their ideas and
feelings.

c. The learning product:

Students’ learning was enriched and extended with the use of readers,
big books and supplementary worksheets and different activities.
Students could make use of the language, functions and content they
learnt from the textbook and the various related materials including
readers, big books and teacher’s diaries for self-expression in their

iv