TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NÔNG NGHIỆP I VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA RESEARCH PROPOSAL A STUDY ON EFFECTS OF PHONICS INSTRUCTION ON READING FLUENCY FO[.]
VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA RESEARCH PROPOSAL A STUDY ON EFFECTS OF PHONICS INSTRUCTION ON READING FLUENCY FOR 5TH GRADERS AT JULIA ENGLISH CENTER, DONG ANH DISTRICT, HA NOI NGHIÊN CỨU ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC HƯỚNG DẪ HỌC ÂM GIÚP HỌC SINH LỚP ĐỌC TRÔI CHẢY TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ JULIA, HUYỆN ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI Student: LAI THI THANH TRA Student code: 651545 Major: ENGLISH Supervisor: NGUYEN THI NGOC THU, M.A Hanoi – 2023 Part 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study Teachers have been experimenting for years to find the most effective strategy to improve reading fluency, particularly for fifth graders The ability to decipher words using phonics is a necessary skill for fluent readers since it helps them comprehend words, phrases, paragraphs, and eventually an entire book A primary literacy program must include phonics because it teaches children how to read and spell words correctly The topic of how children should learn to read and write has come up again as parents, educators, administrators, and educational experts talk about it Students in primary schools put a lot of effort into learning how to decipher words, understand sentences, and link letters to sounds and spelling rules during reading and writing classes and activities Numerous literacy frameworks exist to assist pupils in developing their reading skills Both Burkins & Yates (2021) and the National Reading Panel (2000) concur that phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency abilities and methods should be clearly taught to pupils Certain reading pillars, such as phonemic awareness and phonics, must be acquired before a learner can comprehend and understand the vocabulary connected with a book, even if these pillars are not meant to be utilized independently To read a text and comprehend it smoothly, students need to be able to manipulate different phonemes (Burkins & Yates, 2021) Prior to receiving instruction and receiving an intervention, students' reading fluency levels and phonics skills were evaluated using a benchmark assessment method, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency The effectiveness of explicit phonics instruction and intervention in enhancing reading fluency in a fifth-grade classroom was evaluated using the same assessments administered at the conclusion of the intervention 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study The aim of the study This study aims investigate effection of phonics education for fifth-grade students to read influency Objectives Find out the advantages and disadvantages in applying phonics instruction 1.3 Research questions (in form of questions) What are the advantages of teaching fifth-grade kids phonics instruction? What are the disadvantages of teaching fifth-grade kids phonics instruction? 1.4 Scope of the study The study for the thesis will investigate the effects of phonics instruction on fifthgrade students' in reading fluency at the second semester of the 2023–2024 academic year The Julia English Center has three fifth-grade classes in total, but as the research will only include a small number of these children, class Me5.1, which has eighteen pupils in it, will be used for the study 1.5 Significance of the study This study mainly focuses on studying effects of phonics instruction in order to show certain effects so that this method can be applied to a wider range of children in general and th grade students in particular at Julia English Center 1.6 Design of the study Chapter 1: Literature review, presents a review of literature, concentrating on the issues relates teaching letter and sound on decoding skills Chapter 2: Methodology refers to the techniques used in the research, the tools used to collect data, the participants, and the steps involved in gathering data Chapter 3: Results and Discussions gives an overview of the findings and includes a discussion of them The conclusion chapter: The Conclusion and Implications section provides an overview of the results, highlights the constraints, offers ideas for further study, and summarizes the implications Part 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of the previous studies (At home & abroad) 2.1.1 Review of the previous study at home 2.1.2 Review of the previous study abroad 2.2 Review of theoretical background (depends on what the study is about) In education, there are a lot of theories on how kids learn to read most effectively The way that reading is taught to young students is being revised by some curriculum creators, administrators, and instructors in an effort to improve reading comprehension and fluency According to Burkins and Yates (2021), pupils need to be able to manipulate many phonemes in order to read proficiently Fluency in reading will improve as children become more accustomed to manipulating phonemes Aldhanhani& Abu-Ayyash (2020) state that correct reading or the ability to comprehend words precisely as they are pronounced are prerequisites for reading They also agree that words should be easily and immediately recognized by readers The automaticity theory, according to Samuels (2007), guarantees that readers may both decode and understand a text at the same time It is advised that readers read a book more than once in order to concentrate on comprehension because it is suggested that greater effort be devoted to the decoding portion of reading (Samuels, 2007) Additionally, LaBerge and Samuels (1974) discovered that in order to improve automaticity, readers should begin with letter recognition and attentiveness, then go on to the sounds those letters create, and last consider how those sounds blend LaBerge and Samuels (1974) supported the use of repetition and drilling to promote fluency while reducing errors Rasinksi, Rikli, and Johnston (2009) further contend that prosody—or the expressiveness of oral reading—must be taken into account as a crucial component of reading fluency development Their results demonstrate that while analyzing reading fluency, prosody, fluency, and automaticity must be taken into account Students should get the repetition and abilities necessary to increase their decoding fluency and have a beneficial impact on the reading fluency levels of fifth graders through explicit phonics and phonological awareness instruction 2.2.1 Histoty of reading Readers will not comprehend what they are reading if they are unable to accurately read texts They sometimes become disinterested in reading when the texts they are reading are too complex for them to understand They not believe that reading is pleasurable, even though reading for pleasure is a necessary component of reading (Thompson et al., 2007, as cited in Williams, 2016) Over the lengthy history of reading instruction, the curriculum has undergone constant modification and evolution The previous fifty years' approach, known as basal reader curriculums, was still being used by American teachers to teach beginning reading in 1980 It placed a strong emphasis on small group reading instruction, analytical phonics training, and systematic word control in beginning level books (Morris, 2015, as referenced in Seastrunk, 2018) Beginning reading instruction switched from the basal reading program to the whole language approach in early 1990s It disregarded phonics and rejected the notion of word control for first-grade basal readers Instead, it emphasized the need for guided reading instruction in large groups (Morris, 2015, as referenced in Seastrunk, 2018) One more modification occurred in the year 2000 following the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 Nonetheless, there has been a lot of discussion between supporters of the phonics and whole language reading training methods The data-driven teaching technique, on the one hand, emphasizes word pronunciation and the process of incorporating tiny units of printed data into larger units (Laberge and Samuels, 1974; as referenced in Shapiro & Riley, 1989) This is the cornerstone of teaching phonics The fundamental idea behind the concept-driven teaching technique, on the other hand, is applying prior knowledge to comprehend the reading materials Whole language training is based on this (Shapiro & Riley, 1989) According to Sitthitikul (2014), educators who support phonics education are in opposition to systematic reading instruction The whole language approach, which have been discussed for many years 2.2.2 Phonics instruction When young readers come across a word they are unfamiliar with, they will utilize one or more phonics aspects they know to read that word (Patrick, 2018) Phonological and phonemic awareness, print awareness, alphabetic knowledge and principle, decoding, reading practice with decodable text, irregular or high-frequency words, and reading fluency are the components of phonics and word study (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2004, p 32) Phonological and phonemic awareness is the first component The perception, representation, and production of speech sounds—that is, the speech sound structure—are referred to as phonology, or phonological (Sitthitikul, 2014) Put another way, phonological awareness develops in youngsters when they realize that words make up speech, that syllables make up words, and that phonemes make up syllables Many studies have now confirmed the importance of phonological awareness and how it relates to learning to read Reading instructors who acquire this information and apply it methodically to their students will benefit from it Students should be taught the alphabet, the sounds of each letter, how to mix sounds into syllables, and how to combine syllables to form words, to name a few examples (Sitthitikul, 2014) The capacity to concentrate on and control spoken language's phonemes is known as phonemic awareness The phonemes of a spoken word can be understood by those who are phonemic aware Although phonemes are the units of sound that the alphabet's letters represent, knowledge of phonemes is essential for learning success since it helps one comprehend the reasoning behind the alphabet's rules of phonics and spelling (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, as cited in Sitthitikul, 2014) The National Reading Panel of the USA (2000) states that phonemes are the smallest units that make up spoken language The smallest unit of sound in a word that can alter its meaning is called a phoneme (DfE, 2007) There are approximately 41 phonemes in English They come together to make words and syllables Certain words, like "a" and "oh," may only have one phoneme The majority of words are combinations of phonemes; for example, the word "go" has two phonemes, "check" has three phonemes, and the word "stop" has four phonemes (NICHD, 2000) In contrast, British Received Pronunciation (RP) in the UK has 44 phonemes According to the Department of Education and Skills (DfE) (2007), multiple letters or graphemes can represent a single phoneme For example, f, ff, and ph can all be used to represent the consonant /f/ sound Ai, ay, and a-e can all be used to indicate the vowel /ai/ sound One of the important components that kids need to understand in order to be proficient beginning readers is phonemic awareness According to Cunningham & Gambrell (2011), as referenced in Patrick (2018), it is among the best indicators of reading proficiency Children's phonemic awareness is affected, for instance, when they discover that words like "cat" and "hat" can be altered by altering just one sound or phoneme (Patrick, 2018) Second, print awareness and print concepts are important components for youngsters to acquire reading and writing (Cunningham, 2013, as referenced in Patrick, 2018) Print awareness is the understanding that spoken and written language are related, and that spoken language can be read aloud and written down but written language can only be spoken (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2004) Units of written structures including letters, punctuation, word spacing, and paragraphs are called print conceptions As a conclusion, they read the book from front to back, top to bottom, and left to right (Cunningham, 2013, as referenced in Patrick, 2018) Thirdly, to successfully acquire reading skills, alphabetic knowledge and another aspect that needs to be considered is the alphabetic principle The capacity to recognize upper- and lower-case letters as well as their sounds is known as alphabetic knowledge (Patrick, 2018) It's referred to as alphabet recognition It starts with letter names and moves on to shapes and sounds It encompasses the knowledge of letter shapes, names, and sounds (Vaughn & LinanThompson, 2004) According to Bear et al (2012), as referenced in Patrick (2018), the alphabetic principle describes the letters and letter combinations that are utilized to express phonemes in print It can be specifically defined as the correspondence between letters and sounds Print is defined as written language that uses the 26 English alphabetic letters Graphemes are occasionally used to describe letters in print Graphemes, which stand for phonemes in word spellings, are units of written language A grapheme can be one letter, like p, t, k, a, or n, or it can be made up of several letters, like ch-, sh-, -ck, ea, or igh, each of which represents a single phoneme (NICHD, 2000) A grapheme is a sign of a phoneme, according to the UK's Department of Education and Skills (DfE) (2007) To represent a sound, a grapheme can be a single letter or a collection of letters Letter 'g' represents the sounds /g/ and /j/, whereas letter 'e' represents the sounds /e/ and /ee/ A grapheme can represent more than one phoneme A single letter can be used to represent one sound; this is known as a "monograph." "Digraphs" are composed letters that stand for a single sound "Trigraphs" are composed of three letters that stand for a single sound According to Patrick (2018), children who get specific and isolated instruction in letter-sound relationships—that is, alphabetic principles—will grow up to be successful readers Fourth, decoding is still another essential component of phonics According to Vaughn and Linan Thompson (2004), "decoding is the process of reading letters or letter patterns in a word to determine the meaning of the word; for students, it is a strategy for reading unknown words." Children can focus on understanding the meaning of what they are reading once they are proficient in word decoding (Vaughn & LinanThompson, 2004) Children should then be given reading practice using decodable text as one of the components to help them become better readers (Patrick, 2018) The National Reading Panel (2000) states that books with thoughtful design and the taught letter-sound relations are the source of decodable texts The goal of children's letter-sound-conforming books is to help them successfully decode words that fit the patterns they have learnt Using decodable texts in the classroom gives teachers the chance to demonstrate to their pupils how to blend and segment sounds as well as have them sound out unfamiliar words (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2004) To give an example, consider how rhymes like "pigs doing jigs" and "cats in hats" are frequently incorporated into the books' decodable storylines (NICHD, 2000) Then, when kids come across some words that they are unable to decode, they could have trouble decoding Another component is an irregular word, also known as a high frequency word, which is unreadable by decoding (Vaughn & LinanThompson, 2004) The majority or all of the letters in these words not correspond to the sounds that certain phonics rules require, including "the" and "said." Youngsters should learn to read and write these words as soon as feasible and must become proficient in them via sight (Patrick, 2018) Fluency is the final component that is necessary for kids to comprehend what they read According to Cunningham (2013), p 75, as referenced in Patrick (2018), "fluency is the ability to read most words in context quickly, accurately, automatically, and with appropriate expression." with kids to read with enjoyment, fluency is essential Youngsters who spend an excessive amount of time deciphering textual words will become less aware of their significance They will never be successful readers and will never comprehend the pleasure that reading should bring (Cunningham, 2013, as cited in Patrick, 2018) Teachers need to be knowledgeable of the numerous components of phonics in order to effectively teach it The foundation of a strong reading ability is the process of mastering the various aspects (Patrick, 2018) Furthermore, the guidance ought to be provided in an obvious and methodical manner 2.2.2.1 Systematic and explicit phonics instruction The majority of educators believe that one of the finest methods for teaching young children to read is to teach them phonics There are many different types of commercial textbooks available that are made with phonics training in mind However, the only way to improve young children's word recognition and spelling is through systematic and explicit phonics training (Armbruster et al., 2001; as quoted in White, 2016) The breadth and order of the material covered in each lesson are referred to as systematic instruction The scope of instruction is the range of topics covered; for instance, in Lesson 1, students will learn about phonemic awareness of the sounds /t/, /at/, and /a/ As per Seastrunk (2018), sequence refers to the arrangement of letter-sound relationships that will be presented in the lesson (Griffith & Mesmer, 2005) To give an example, the following are the recommendations made by Chall & Popp (1996) for a systematic phonics instruction: Consonants come before vowels; in sentences with a final silent e, short vowels come before long vowels Vowel combinations are preceded by long vowels with a silent e Typically, vowel pairings aref ollowed by syllabication The teaching strategy a teacher use when delivering the material is referred to as explicit instruction A teacher gives students opportunities to practice reading words; explains the lesson's purpose clearly; implements engaging activities through speaking, listening, writing, and reading; and assesses the students' understanding of the material (Mesmer & Griffith, 2005; Five Essential Reading Components, 2004; as cited in Henry, 2012.The following six steps of explicit instruction are covered: Rosenshine & Stevens, 1995; as referenced in Rupley, Blair & Nichols, 2009) lists the following objectives: Review and cross-check prior work; Present new content; Provide guided practice; Provide feedback and corrections; Provide autonomous practice; and Provide weekly and monthly reviews It appears that when given systematic and explicit phonics teaching, pupils in a Dutch reading class were able to use their understanding of grapheme-phoneme correspondences to comprehend words and passages With this training, students could advance their reading abilities (Schaars, Segers, & Verhoeven, 2017) Moreover, according to Ehri et al (2001), it is said to be more successful than whole language and nonsystematic phonics education 2.2.2.2 Approaches to phonics instruction Several methods from the original phonics training used in classrooms are implemented with explicit and systematic instruction; these include phonics through spelling, onset-rime phonics, synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, embedded phonics, analogy phonics, and NICHD, 2000 The application techniques of teaching differ despite the fact that these phonics systems involve a planned and sequential introduction of a set of phonic elements during practice and instruction (NICHD, 2000) For example, the main goals of synthetic phonics systems are to blend sounds into words and decode letters into sounds In systems that teach analytical phonics, students first learn words and then break them down into their constituent letters and sounds The goal of phonics-through spelling programs is to write words or new words by transforming sounds into letters The main goal of phonics in context programs is to help students predict new words as they read a book by using context clues and sound-letter relations Students learn how to create new words through analogy phonics programs, which emphasize the use of printed word elements such as onsets (the consonants that come before vowels) and rimes (the vowels and following consonants) The fundamentals of all phonics programs are similar, despite their differences: letter-sound correspondences, alphabetic systems, and decoding abilities A lot of the time, certain phonics systems combine two or more various approaches to teaching phonics (NICHD, 2000) Children are required to sound out words phoneme by phoneme when using synthetic phonics (Bear et al., 2012, as referenced in Patrick, 2018) Since children's primary technique in synthetic phonics is mixing phonemes to form words, there is no guessing method (Patrick, 2018) Nonetheless, youngsters that employ synthetic method in reading face two challenges One is that "extra" sounds must be eliminated when merging words with stop consonants The vowel sound made when letters are pronounced independently is known as the additional sound For instance, children must eliminate the "uh" sounds while blending the syllables "tuh-a-puh" to get the word "tap." Another challenge is that it might be challenging to control and generate the sounds in the correct order when there are more than two or three sounds to blend For example, there are five sounds that children may find difficult to recall and pronounce when they combine the words "s-tuh-r-ea-m" to say "stream" (NICHD, 2000) The National Reading Panel (2000) states that it is unclear how any systematic phonics strategy differs from another However, they both use a predetermined and ordered list of phonetic components throughout the lesson These concepts are methodically and explicitly explained Every phonics approach's ultimate objective is to provide students with the information and skills necessary to utilize the alphabetic code in order to read and comprehend written language (p.2-99) 2.2.2.3 Limitations of phonics instruction Because it is too difficult to pay attention to every sound in a word, phonics education does not inspire young pupils to develop specific reading and writing skills Put another way, pupils can become weary of studying phonics and stop enjoying their classes To engage students in class, teachers should plan engaging and encouraging activities and incorporate them into their lessons (Sitthitikul, 2014) According to Cheng (2015), practicing conventional phonics has a detrimental effect on Taiwanese elementary pupils in Asia One letter to one sound correspondences are taught first in traditional phonics training, followed by digraphs of consonants and vowels, in that order When taught digraphs or two letters-one sound rules, such as that "ck" stands for the /k/ sound and "a" for the /ae / and /eɪ/ sounds, students who are already familiar with one letterone sound rules at the beginning of the session become confused The primary issue faced by Taiwanese pupils is a phenomena known as "Letter name letter sound confusion." To address this issue, Cheng (2014) introduced the Revelation Phonics Approach (RPA), a novel phonics method RPA starts with single-letter, single-sound rules and concurrently applies digraph rules Phonics education is still widely used in general English schools, especially in classrooms where young children are starting to read, even if it is unsuccessful in some settings 2.2.3 Definition of phonics instruction 10 Children can learn to read and write through the use of phonics It aids kids with hearing, recognizing, and utilizing the various sounds that separate English words from one another Because written language is like a code, children who understand the sounds of individual letters and how those sounds mix to form words will have an easier time decoding words as they read.Children who comprehend phonics will also be better able to write words by knowing which letters to utilize In phonics, letters or groups of letters are matched to the sounds of spoken English As an example, the letter “k” can be spelled c, k, ck, or ke Children who are taught to mix letter sounds will be better able to sound out new or unfamiliar words For instance, after learning the sounds for the letters t, p, a, and s, a youngster can begin to construct the words "tap," "taps," "pat," and 2.2.3.1 Decoding skill Decoding is a process of recognizing words in a reading or a text and always appears when the reader performs reading comprehension The process of identifying terminology while reading a book is called decoding The word's phoneme will be combined with a letter or combinations of letters to transform the word's letter into speech throughout this procedure To aid minimize learning time and advance the process of learning other languages in general and reading English literature in particular, the vocabulary decoding process is required As phonemic and letter knowledge provide the basis for the decoding process, phonics is crucial to reading comprehension Readers should increase their vocabulary, learn more about phonetic information, and practice recognizing words by sounds and letters in order to improve their decoding skills The ability of children to correctly recognize and pronounce a letter or sounds when they come across a single letter (a–z) on flashcards is known as decoding skill It entails being able to recognize every letter in a collection of letters found in words, non-words, and high-frequency words Researchers, practitioners, and legislators studying reading are coming to an agreement about how important decoding is to the reading process as it has become more and more clear that a significant portion of kids are not developing into proficient readers (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) Efficient and precise decoding is a crucial component of proficient reading, as demonstrated by numerous studies conducted by cognitive scientists (Adams, Treiman, & Pressley, 1997; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Rack, Snowling, & Olson, 1992; Share, 1995; 11 Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Vellutino, Scanlon, & Sipay, 1997) Phonological knowledge is necessary for automatic word recognition, which frees the reader to focus on meaning; conversely, laborious and sluggish decoding strains short-term memory and makes comprehension difficult We will not advance much in decoding instruction unless it is based on our understanding of the phases of reading development, the structure of the English language, and the methods that kids use to acquire it This revived interest in phonics is undoubtedly a positive development Generally speaking, these ideas not guide classroom activities As we'll see, there are numerous issues with both traditional phonics programs and the decoding strategies generally seen in whole-language and "literature-based" 2.2.3.2 Phonics Instruction that Supports Reading Development Part 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research method This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore 12 particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 434 This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena 13 deeply by using extensive data collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 434) This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data 14 collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 434) This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection 15 This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their 16 academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study 17 The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 434) This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore 18 particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 434) This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena 19 deeply by using extensive data collection (Creswell, 2012: 465, Fraenkel, et al, 2012: 43 This study aimed to examine the reading habit of master degree students’ and its effect on their academic writing skill The design of this study was qualitative research in the form of case study The case study was applied to explore particular phenomena deeply by using extensive data 20