Development of English pronunciation with phonics

Abstract

Phonics instruction is to teach students correspondence between graphemes in written language and phonemes in spoken language and how to use these correspondences to read and spell words. Thai students’ ability of English speaking and listening are, in general, still minimal. On the other hand, they have been forced to learn grammar instead. To improve their English command and learning achievement, the phonics instruction should be taught in class. This current study aimed to evaluate English consonants pronunciation competence of students (N=20) majoring in English for International Communication, Faculty of Science and Technology, Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand. The participants were taught pronunciation with phonics approach of 10 exercises. After that they were asked to read aloud a 30-word list for a pretest and a posttest. The results showed that the mean score of posttest is higher than the pretest (P < 0.01). The phonics instructional effectiveness was 90.57 / 86.47, higher than the criteria set at 80/80.