Literacy skills: phonics in the pre-primary classroom

Abstract

There is a plethora of manuals aiming to provide a rationale and suggestions to preservice and graduate teachers when planning and evaluating a literature-based curriculum. English adds an enormous difficulty for the particular characteristics of its phonetic system, generating struggle in learners (Levis & Grant, 2003; Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011). The phoneme-grapheme correspondence in English is perceived as ambiguous, especially by non-native speakers (Wyse & Goswami, 2008). Research has proven that synthetic phonics training prompts a faster acquisition of reading skills and a more transparent orthography (Ibarrola, 2007). The specific objective of this study is to gain an insight into the perceptions of prospective teachers with regards to the use of phonics, decodables and children’s literature for the teaching of literacy. A mixed-methods approach (Bryman, 2012) was chosen to triangulate findings. The quantitative data were collected by a 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire, while open-ended questions gathered the qualitative data. The convenient sample were 89 students from the English literacy skills subject. Results indicate that preservice teachers acknowledge children’s book may not be the main resource to teach pronunciation and literacy. Also, they received positively the phonics methodology, which was largely new to them as well as the use of decodables.