Solutions to improve the quality of teaching phonics for the students of grade 4

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC.
"English has become the medium of all relevant social interactions and
the ability to use English effectively is considered an absolute essential for
honorable existence."
- Quotation from a retired Army Colonel English is a pre-eminent world language, it is at the heart of our culture
and it is the language medium in which most of our pupils think and
communicate. It plays a very important role in in human life . English is not
only the language in the field of international communication but also the
language of the science, information technology, socio-cultural, tourism and
commercial,etc. In Vietnam, English is considered as a compulsory subject at
school, especially Primary School . With the trend of international integration ,
Vietnam is increasingly able to be fully available in all areas . Communicative
languages becomes an effective tool in every aspects of life. Besides the mother
tongue, the Vietnamese consider English as the second communicative language
and the major subject in the school course. To meet the growing demand as well
as communication needs of society, the Ministry of Education and Training has
put English into the progam at Primary School. The English program in Primary
Schools is to form and develop for students the knowledge and basic skills in
English, through learning English, students gain knowledge and their love for
the Vietnamese. Learning English not only contributes for the development of
personality and learning style but also provides students with basic knowledge
and help students understand initially the knowledge about the people and
culture of English speaking countries .
At Primary School, English is a subject which has its own characteristics.
Therefore teachers are like an artist , he or she need to be creative and cheerful
in order to involve students in learning English excitingly. As a teacher of
English at Primary School, I am always awared of researching the specific
methods in teaching English, especially in teaching phonics in order to make the
students to believe that they can speak English fluently and naturally. Children
will not be motivated to speak in English unless they are presented with words

in context. Once they believe this, we will be able to focus on improve the
quality of their outputs. The process of learning is just as important as the final
product, and the children need to be encouraged to experiment with ideas and
work collaboratively to share ideas. Creating a positive classrooom ethos where
children feel empowered to work in a collaborative way is an important role of
the teacher. We need to understand the inter-relationship between speaking,
listening, reading and writing and we need to plan for speaking opportunities in
the classroom in the same way that we plan for teaching phonics.
Phonics is a method of teaching reading that emphasizes the predictable
relationship between sounds and the alphabetic symbols in our language. It is
also called “alphabetic principles.” There has been great controversy about the
necessity of teaching phonics in our country for many years.
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It is a method for teaching reading and writing the English language by
developing learners’ phonemic awareness the ability to hear, identify and
manipulate phonemes in order to teach the correspondence between these
sounds and the spelling patterns that represent them.
The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written
words by sounding them out, or in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling
patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics
is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole
language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading.
Phonics is once again a hot topic that teachers, parents, school board members
and legislators are discussing about it. In this research, there was little
knowledge on which to base decisions regarding how phonics should be taught
at Primary School. In the decades since, we have accumulated vast amounts of
knowledge about how brain works, how children learn, and how words are
structured.

After exploring and accumulating the experiences from colleagues, I have
applied modern teaching methods in teaching phonics and achieved quite
effective results. The students are more interested in learning English and more
confident in speaking before the class. This improves that my methods are right.
With the passion and the love for teaching English, I have studied and developed
the research: "Solutions to improve the quality of teaching phonics for the
students of grade 4 "
1.2. THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH.
- The research applies the methods of teaching phonics to involve students
in learning phonics well.
- Creating the language circumstance to communicate in English and
promote students to actively participate in communicative activities; offering
some solutions to help students use knowledge of vocabulary, phonetics and
grammar in communication.
- Giving some solutions and methods for teaching phonics.
- Exchanging and sharing some methods of teaching phonics for primary
students.
1.3. RESEARCH OBJECTS.
- The object of study: With this research I focused on the students of grade
4.
- Systematizing some theoretical issues about the procedures and
activities in teaching phonics in English Primary program according to the
communicative approach.
- Exploring the present situation of teaching phonics at Primary School.
1.4. RESEARCH METHODS
1.4.1 . Theoretical research method :
Researching and reading legal documents, scientific literature and
textbooks which are related to researching problems by means of analysis ,
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synthesis, comparison, to find the theoretical issues as a basis for solving
problems and researching tasks .
1.4.2 . Survey Method :
To survey the actual situation of teaching and learning phonics at Primary
School in order to discover new problems that need to be solved, determining
the common causes and preparing for the next procedures .
1.4.3 . Conversation Method:
Exchanging to colleagues about the advantages and disadvantages of
phonics and know how to use it to develop speaking skill for elemantary
students.
1.4.4 . Observation Method :
Observating the colleagues’ classes.
1.4.5 . Comparison Method :
During the researching and teaching in grade 4, I have used this method to
compare the survey results before and after applying the experiences of teaching
phonics.
1.4.6 . Checking and assessment Method:
Through the lessons and students’ test survey. From the test results of the
assessment I classified the students into groups and had suitable methods for
each kind of student.
1.4.7 . Group of complementary Methods :
- Methods of mathematical statistics .
- Methods of data analysis .
1.5. NEW POINTS OF EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
These new features are to share solutions in teaching phonics to develop
speaking skills for elementary students, helping them be more confident to
communicate in English.

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2. RESEARCH CONTENTS
2.1 . RATIONALE:
A significant base of research, developed over many years, is available to
inform educators about effective approaches to teaching children to read.
However, research on applying the methods of teaching phonics for primary
students is in its infancy. This reflects the fact that many teachers in the Vietnam
are faced with the challenge of teaching children to read and write in English
when the students have a heritage language that is not English and they are not
yet proficient in English. Making this a more critical issue, several studies
suggest that teachers are not receiving adequate professional development in
effective strategies to teach phonics for studnts. As part of the effort to learn
more about teaching phonics for primary students, educational researchers and
teachers in Vietnam have looked at instructional practices in Primary Schools.
When those Primary Schools are faced with the challenge of teaching phonics
for children, there has been greatest transfer of best practices. Research and
close observation of teaching phonics has been conducted in primary education
system, and a smaller amount of research in Vietnam for the obvious reason that
phonics helps to prevent common errors that arise from sight reading; it ensures
that children adopt a rigorous strategy that enables them to deconstruct each
word individually, rather than trying to remember what the word looks like. This
will benefit children from all backgrounds. If they have internalised some words
through sight reading, this method will help to iron out any errors. In addition,
phonics can help support those who aren’t from culturally rich homes. If
students aren’t read to at home, they will have a lesser reservoir of sight-learned
words to draw from when reading. If we teach them the phonics strategy, they
will be able to approach any new word with more confidence. If kids feel
confident when reading, and experience the sense of success from being able to
successfully decode, reading will become a more pleasurable experience for

them. In order to make best use of the information presented in this research,
many teachers might want to consider the following set of questions together in
preparation for making decisions about teaching phonics for primary students.
Note that this research focuses on teaching phonics to help children in the
elementary grades learn to read. It does not address many other important issues
about the impact of phonics on literacy, such as what it means to be information
literate in the 21st century. Nor does it address the role of phonics in language
arts in general, or in reading beyond the elementary level.
Educators generally agree that children learning to read and write English
need to understand that there is a relationship between letter patterns and sound
patterns in English (the alphabetic principle), to internalize major relationships
between letter and sound patterns, and eventually to develop an awareness of the
"separate" sounds in words (phonemic awareness). In other words, educators
agree that emergent readers and writers need to develop a functional command
of what is commonly called phonics. However, this does not not necessarily
mean that children should be taught phonics intensively and systematically,
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through special phonics programs or even through phonics lessons in basal
reading books and workbooks. Indeed, various lines of research argue for
helping children develop phonics knowledge in the context of reading and
enjoying literature and in the context of writing, rather than through isolated
skills lessons. Many of these reasons are listed below, followed by a list of ways
that teachers can help children learn phonics and develop phonemic awareness
while reading and writing interesting texts.
Despite extravagant claims found in the popular media, research does not
strongly support the teaching of phonics intensively and systematically-and
certainly not phonics first. At best, systematic phonics (in comparison with
traditional basal-reader/whole word approaches) may produce better scores on

reading comprehension tests, but only through grade 4 (Chall, 1967/1983). A
recent study suggests that an approach which emphasizes phonemic awareness
and phonics may get children off to an earlier start in grasping letter/sound
relationships and reading words than an approach that embeds phonics in a
whole literacy context, but the direct instruction, whole language, and embedded
phonics groups showed no significant differences in comprehension (Foorman et
al., forthcoming). Overall, "there is little evidence that one form of phonics
instruction is strongly superior to another" (Stahl, McKenna, & Pagnucco, 1994)
in developing phonics knowledge and phonemic awareness.
2.2. THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE PROBLEM
Analysis of my school’s performance in teaching and learning phonics in
recent years showed that our average score in phonics had been consistently
below that of like other schools in urban areas. It was a situation that was of
concern and motivated a thorough examination of the school’s approach to the
teaching of phonics.
Our school is a public primary school in the center of Thanh Hoa city. It is
a large school with around 1747 students, ranging from 6 to 10 years old. There
are seven to eight classes in most year levels, meaning that collaboration among
teachers is extremely important to ensure consistency in learning programs. In
the school year 2009 - 2010, Ministry of Education and Training applied
Phonics International as the framework in the progam of teaching English for
primary students. After some year of teaching Enlish 4, I found that most of the
students can not pronounce the new words correctly. They only focused on
grammar and vocabulary and didn’t like to learn phonics during the lesson.
2.2.1. About students:
In fact, in the process of learning a foreign language, students often focus
on learning grammar mainly because the test requires the application of
grammar, the tests often have a few exercises with phonics. In English class they
have little chance to practice pronouncing. Over time they lose their ability to
communicate in English. In addition, the limitation of students’ speaking skill of

the have some reasons:
+ The old habit of learning English does not motivate students to
communicate in English.
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+ Being lack of knowledge of English to communicate everyday .
+ Having a few opportunities to practice English in the classroom with
their teacher and classmates.
2.2.2 . About the teacher :
Many teachers in the Vietnam are faced with the challenge of teaching
children to read and write in English, when the students have a heritage
language that is not English and they are not yet proficient in English
Normally when teaching a foreign language, teachers often focus on
teaching vocabulary, grammar or structure . However, grammar is not the final
result of the teaching and learning process. It is only a tool to help learner to
communicate more effectively. But in fact, there are some differences between
spoken English and written English. Written English requires the accuracy
statement of the structure, whereas spoken English needs the flexibility and the
intimacy in communication .
From those factors, there are some problems in teaching phonics for
primary student at school. However, in a number of causes, teachers and
students can progressively overcome the difficulties. Therefore, in the teaching
process teachers must use some suitable techniques to teach students how to lean
phonics effectively. He or she should have creative and flexible approaches in
using the methods of teaching phonics.
2.2.3. About the teaching facilities.
My school has facilities of teaching and learning to meet the needs of
specific subjects such as: projectors, the modern teaching equipment like Robot
Teacher, Television, CD player,etc. So the application of teaching phonics is

quite effectively.
2.2.4. The quality survey and students’ classification
Based on the present situation of students in class 4 the level of all
students is acquired after a few weeks of the school year with the methods of
teaching phonics. I had 40 minutes to test students in class 4D to survey and
classify the students. The result is:
Class The numbers Excellen
Good
Fair
Poor
Fail
of students
t
(B)
(C)
(D)
(F)
(A)
4D
49
6 = 12% 12 = 24%
21= 44% 10= 20%
0
According to the survey result, I have classified the students and
immediately applied the methods and experiences which I accumulated over the
years to improve the teaching and learning quality.
2.3. THE SOLUSIONS
According to the present situation in English classes at my school,
pronouncing wrong still exists in all grades from 3 to 5, especially in grade 4. To
improve this situation, I would like to present the defintion of phonics, some

methods of teaching phonics and elicit the stages of teaching phonics for
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primary student which I have researched and applied quite successfully at my
school.
2.3.1. What is Phonics?
There has been much confusion over this term. Phonics is a method of
teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning to associate letters
or letter groups (graphemes or phonograms) with the sounds they represent
(phonemes). Students must learn to unravel the secrets of the code (in other
words, decode) before they can comprehend the meaning of the written word.
Phonics is seen to be an improvement on the previously used method of
learning the approximate sounds represented by letters(b=buh) first and then
blending them with other sounds (bl=bluh) to decode and encode words in
written form. This newer method attempts to eliminate the extraneous "uh"
sounds which were unavoidable in the older method. Children also learn
strategies to figure out words they don't know. It is considered an "analytical"
approach where students analyze the letters, letter combinations and syllables in
a word; in an effort to "decode" the speech-sounds represented by the letters and
the meaning of the text. The advantage of phonics is that, especially for students
who come to schools with large English vocabularies, it enables students to
decode or "sound-out" a word they have in their speaking vocabulary.
2.3.2. How much phonics is enough?
Phonics is the training wheels of reading. So, how much phonics is
enough? When do we take off the training wheels and let them fly? You see, that
is the question; how much phonics and practice are needed for mastery? Some
of us may need training wheels a lot longer than others. Too little, and some
children will become struggling readers unnecessarily. Too much, and some can
develop an overdependence on phonics if it’s pushed too hard and too long.

Phonics is a means to an end, and generally speaking, most of the phonics
a child will need can be covered in two years with more advanced concepts
taught in quick mini-lessons at later years. One study I read said that grade 3
phonics could be covered in forty minutes per day, while in grade 4; it should
only take twenty minutes. After that, it can be covered in just a few minutes per
week, especially if you’re using a phonics-based spelling program and take the
time to teach the phonics concepts
Students need to be encouraged to work toward automatically recognizing
larger and larger chunks of the words. But in the meantime, they must learn the
code if they’re every going to be able to read easily.
The primary focus of phonics instruction is to help beginning readers
understand how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound
correspondences and spelling patterns and to help them learn how to apply this
knowledge in their reading.
Phonics instruction may be provided systematically or incidentally. The
hallmark of a systematic phonics approach or program is that a sequential set of
phonics elements is delineated and these elements are taught along a dimension
of explicitness depending on the type of phonics method employed. Conversely,
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with incidental phonics instruction, the teacher does not follow a planned
sequence of phonics elements to guide instruction but highlights particular
elements opportunistically when they appear in text.
Phonics is presented in part 1 of lesson 2 in all Units of the book “
English 4” which is published by Vietnamese Educational Publishers.
Teaching pronunciation in English 4 consist of teaching Phonics and
Songs/ Rhymes/Chants. Phonics enables pupils to recognise the relatioship
between letters or letter combinations and the souds they make. With the
knowledge of phonics, pupils are able to improve their speaking and reading

skills because they can identify the spelling and the pronunciation patterns of
listening new words and decode them quikly. Focus the pupils’ attentions on the
letter and its sounds in words, and model the new sounds a few times for pupils
to repeat.
In teaching Phonics and Songs/ Rhymes/ Chants, it is advisable that the
teacher should introduce the Songs/ Rhymes/ Chants in which the new sounds
are embedded; teach new vocabulary, using flashcards, realia, pictures,etc; and
mime the lines if it is possible.
Teaching pronunciation in the book “ English 4” includes teaching
phonics, songs, rhymes all chants . Pronunciation help students recognize the
relationship between letters and letters with the corresponding sounds. With
knowledge of pronunciation, students can improve their speaking and reading
skill because they can recognize patterns pronunciation and spelling of new
words when listening.
Here are 5 basic steps to teach phonics that I have applied successfully at
my school:
Step 1 : Introducing the sounds in the songs, rhymes or chants; teaching
new words using word cards, real objects, pictures,etc. Focusing on the sounds
of letters and words.
Step 2 : Playing the recording a few time or let pupils listen to the Robot
Teacher; having them repeat each line of the Songs/ Rhymes/ Chants and clap
the words containing the focused sounds.
Step 3 : Clap your hands to the beat while listening to the words that
contain the sound that need to be trained.
Step 4 : Organizing students to practice in pairs or groups to practice the
songs, rhymes or chants.
Step 5 : Calling on some volunteers to perform the Songs/ Rhymes/
Chants at the front of the class and have the rest of the class clap the rhythm of
the chant.
Those are five steps that I usually use to teach phonics in Lesson 2:

Listen and repeat. It need to be noted that in the classroom, the correct
pronunciation of the teachers is not enough, it also needs the modern equipments
such as speakers, CD player, Robot teacher,etc.
For example: Unit 7: Places in my school - Lesson 2 (Page 48)
1. Listen and repeat
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- Have students look at the words small and big and notice the letters
coloured differently in both words.
- Tell them they are going to distinguish and produce the sounds sm in
small and that of b in big.
- Produce the sounds sm and b a few times. And ask students to say what
they think about when they hear these sounds.
- Teach the words book, pen, big, small and together.
Small
Big
Look. Look
A big book
Look.Look
A small book
Big, small
Big, small
Big and small togetther.
- Play the recording all the way through for students to listen as they read
the chant on the board or in their books. Clap the syllables.
- Play the recording again for students to repeat each line of the chant and
clap the syllables.
- Call on the group of six to the front of the class, have three of them
repeat each line of the chant, and the other three clap the syllables. Repeat the

step but this time have the students swap their parts.
- Ask students to practice saying and clapping the chant in groups.
- Monitor the activity and offer help; correct pronnciation error(s) (stress,
assimilation of sounds, intonation) when necessary.
- Call on a group to recite the chant. The rest of the class clap the
syllables.
- Ask some questions about the chant to ensure students’ comprehension
of the language.
- Have the whole class recite the chant and clap the syllables to reinforce
their pronunciation.
2.3.3. Ten Simple Phonics Activities.
Getting students to discover and practice the connections between letters
and the sounds they represent should be an important part of any English class
routine. The following activities can be adjusted to meet different levels and
adapted to fit into any timeframe. Please note that not every activity you do in
class has to be extremely challenging. Simple ideas that everybody is able to
accomplish can work wonders with student confidence which, in turn, can
increase motivation.
The following are ten activities that can assist us in practicing phonics at
any point in the lesson:
* Letters on the Board: At first, the teacher writes some letters on the
board. The teacher reads out a word, one at a time, and asks the students to try
and spell each word using only the letters on the board. It is always a good idea
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to stop after the first word in order to write the correct spelling on the board.
This can then be used as a reference point for the students for successive words.
After reading out five to ten words, go through the spellings of each word. Also,
limit the number of vowel sounds you practice as the variety of sounds they

represent can be really challenging for students, especially beginners.
* Speed Reading: Write a number of words on the board. If necessary, go
over the pronunciation of each word. Then read through a list of the same words
at a good speed leaving out only one of the words. The students should be
listening to you read the list of words while following along on the board. After
you are finished, they tell you which word (words) you did not read out. This
activity can be targeted for a higher level by adjusting the vocabulary used, the
speed you read, the number of words you leave off, or by doing additional tasks.
* Battleship Phonics: This is based on the popular game Battleship. The
teacher would draw a grid on the board with initial sounds written across the
top, and medial and final sounds written together down the left side of the grid.
You would let the students know that you have chosen a few squares as ‘special
squares’ that they should seek out. They find these squares by volunteering to
say a whole word made up of a letter at the top and the side of the grid. The
intersection of this row and column highlights a particular square. The object is
for the students to find all your designated special locations.
* Phonics Bingo: Write a good number of sounds on the board, e.g., pha,
ma, la, ga. The students would choose a designated number of sounds you wrote
and write them on an available space for writing. You would then play this like
bingo and read out the sounds one by one. The students can get bingo when they
have three of their sounds chosen or all of their sounds chosen. It is a good idea
to go over all of the sounds written on the board beforehand to help ease
comprehension.
* Criss-cross Phonics: All the students stand up. To begin, show a word
or a picture. The first student to raise their hand gets called upon and if they can
correctly say the first (or last) sound of that word they can sit down and choose
if the people in their row, horizontally or vertically, can also sit down. Gradually,
there are fewer and fewer students standing.
* Missing Sound: Draw or show an image on the blackboard. Beside the
image, write all but one of the sounds. For example, there is a picture of a dog

on the board, you write ‘og’ beside it and the students have to provide you with
the missing sound, not the letter. This can be made into a group contest or a
simple whole - class exercise where you would give the class time to think of
the answer and get everyone to say the answer at the same time.
* Two Sounds: Good to practice sound distinction. Have two words on
the board representing the two different sounds you would like to practice, e.g.,
MEN, MAN. You would then show the students pictures and get them to put
those words under the appropriate column. For example, you show a picture of a
pen, the students should write ‘pen’ under the MEN column. (If you are dealing
with beginners, they could just mark their choice with an ‘X’ under the column
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instead of asking them to write out the words. You would, however, have to give
numbers before every word to help everybody keep track of choices.)
* Beginning/Middle/End: Students copy down the chart you provided on
the board which is divided into three sections. You can label the three sections,
‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’ in English or the native language of your
students. You would focus on a specific sound and read out words containing
that sound. The students would have to decide if that sound was found in the
beginning, middle or end of the word by writing the sound in that appropriate
column.
* Ball and Cap Game: The students pass around a hat and a ball. When
the music stops, the student with the hat must take out a piece of paper with a
letter or letters written on it then read out its sound, not the letter name. The
student with the ball must guess the letter(s).
* Pen and Eraser: Students have a pen and an eraser in front of them.
You have two sounds you would like to practice, e.g., ‘f’ and ‘v’ sounds, and
designate one sound for the pen and one sound for the eraser. When you say a
word beginning with one of those sounds, the students should pick up the

appropriate object (for upper levels, the sound can be in any part of the word not
just the beginning). If you say a word not incorporating one of the sounds, the
students should make a big X with their arms. This can evolve into a pair contest
with one pen and one eraser for every two students.
* Concluding Remarks: Matching sounds to letters and letters to sounds
can be quite a tricky and daunting task when students are learning English.
Activities such as these are simple to initiate, easily adaptable, and are good
ways to practice and enforce English phonics.
2.3.4. Creating a friendly and close atmosphere in class:
One of the factors that make the lesson be successful is the atmosphere of
the classroom. The lesson can not be effective when students and teachers work
with stress, especially in the speaking lesson. Therefore, teachers should always
be the person who is creative and skilful to to make the lesson more interesting
and exciting. There are some principles to follow in teaching speaking skill :
- Do not force students to speak properly as teacher wants. Let them
express their idea, then the teacher comments and suggests .
- Do not interrupt when students are presenting their idea.
- Encouraging students with brief praises such as: Good!, Excellent!, Well
done!, etc…
- Creating a relaxing and close atmosphere by some small games related
to the lesson or some English songs/ chants. After the first task of the lesson,
teacher can give students some questions : " Now , students . Task 1 You did very
well and I give you three minutes off . Do you like this ? / Do you want to play a
small game ? / Do you want to sing a song ? ", etc… This is not only makes the
classroom’s atmosphere be more comfortable but also helps students to increase
communication between teachers and students.
2.3.5 . Teaching students both British English and American English
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English is the international language so in each country it has some
differences in spelling and pronunciation. Most English documents are
published according to the popular pronunciations of British English and
American English. Actually we can not compare the accuracy of the British
English or American English, that why it is important to teach the students in
using both American English and British English . There are three major
differences between British English and American English:
+ Speech - the differences are in both vowels and consonants, as well as
emphasis and intonation .
+ Vocabulary - the differences are nouns and verbs, especially the use of
phrasal verbs .
+ Spelling - the differences are generally found in the form of prefixes
and suffixes certain .
In the Primary English program, teaching pronunciation according to the
pronunciations of British - English and American – English is very important.
Teachers need to give students the differences between them in order to help the
students undersand the context in any ways. These are some words that have the
differences between British - English and American – English:
British - English
American – English
Bookstore
Bookshop
Favourite
Favorite:
Autumn
Fall
Candy
Sweet
Football
Soccer

Colour
color
2.3.6. Tips for successful phonic teaching:
Phonics is a highly effective method we can use to teach children to read
and write. Instead of just learning the 26 letters of the alphabet, the children are
taught 42 sounds of English. The children are taught to identify individual
sounds (phonemes) in oral language, then they learn the way these sounds are
represented by letters (graphemes). If we teach the 42 sounds to the children one
by one, we can provide the children with the tools to begin to read and write on
their own. Children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read words
and segment them for spelling. Once the first sounds have been taught, children
are introduced to the idea that sounds can be represented by more than one letter
(i as in tiger, ie as in pie, igh as in night) and that sounds can be written in
different ways. A systematic approach can facilitate the children’s progress
towards independent reading and writing. These are ten tips for teaching phonics
that I have applied successful for my students at my school:
* One sound at a time: Introduce one sound at a time. For example, the
sound /ei/, as in rain, train, etc, can be practised before moving on to other
sounds.
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*Context: Introduce each sound in a simple context that the students will
understand. If the context is too complex, students will struggle to understand
and their attention will be divided.
* Model the sounds: Always say the sound and not the letter name when
teaching phonics. Some sounds are short eg ‘t’, so it is a good idea to repeat the
sound a few times so that the students can hear it properly: ‘t, t, t, t’. Some are
long eg ‘ffffff’. We can stretch these sounds out as we model them.
* Use simple examples: After the introduction of the sound in context,

show a selection of images that contain the target sound. Point to each one in
turn, naming as you do so and encourage the students to repeat after you. Don’t
show the words for these images at this stage. Emphasize the target sound in
these words. Use vocabulary items the children are familiar with.
* Review all the sounds you have taught before introducing a new one:
Stick the grapheme cards you have introduced so far on the board and point to
each one in turn. Make sure the children are confident in making the sounds
before you move on.
* Blending and segmenting: Once you have introduced the first two or
three sounds, show the children how to blend them together to read words. Start
by pushing the graphemes together to form two letter words eg i-t it, a-t at and
move on to cvc words eg sat, sit, pat, pit. Use word cards containing only the
sounds you have introduced and encourage the students to blend these sounds
for reading. Show them how to segment by saying words and teaching the
children to separate them into individual phonemes.
For example, tell the students you are going to say some words and they
have to listen and tell you the sound at the beginning, middle or end (use your
arm to demonstrate)
For example:
T: tin (segmenting and blending with your arm as you do so). Repeat,
encouraging the students to join in.
T: Which sound is at the beginning (t) / in the middle (i) / at the
end(n)? (use your arm: touch your shoulder / elbow / hand).
tin
how
ant
sit
Nam Big
Tom
pen can hi

* Games: Introduce a variety of games for the students to start to
discriminate between sounds.
(+) Sound and action: Materials: grapheme cards
Hold up the graphemes one by one at random. Have the students say the
sound and do the action in quick succession.
(+) Pick a sound: Materials: sound cards (one for each student) in a box
Let students sit in a circle and give the first student the box. The student
picks a card from the box, identifies the phoneme (eg ‘p’) and thinks of
something beginning with that sound (eg ‘pig’). Pass the box to the next student
and repeat.
* Reading: Practice makes perfect, so once you have taught the first six
sounds, introduce the students to captions and mini-stories that contain only the
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sounds they have learnt so far, eg sit in a tin / pat an ant. The students will begin
to gain confidence and realize that they can read on their own.
* Writing: Some sounds require extra teaching as they have multiple
graphemes. Sounds such as ‘c’, ‘k’ and ‘ck’ will require 3 or 4 separate input
sessions. students will quickly begin to read words containing the three different
graphemes, but extra work will be required to help them determine when to
write each one. If you have mini-whiteboards, short dictations can help as can
activities that encourage the students sort and classify words according to
spelling.
* Actions: If you are using a multi-sensory method where you introduce
the letter sounds accompanied by an action, this will aid students’ memories and
serve as a tool to help them read more difficult sounds. This way, instead of
reading the word for the students when they get stuck, use the action to remind
them of the sound to get them back on track.
2.3.7. Alphabetic knowledge and some kinds of exercises for teaching

the alphabet.
* Alphabetic knowledge:
The goal of instruction that develops alphabet knowledge is to get
children to recognize and name letters quickly and accurately (Adams, 1990).
Knowledge of letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember
the forms of written words, to treat words as sequences of letters, and to develop
the alphabetic principle: the association of letters with their corresponding
sounds. Alphabetic knowledge progresses from letter names to letter shapes (the
form) to letter sounds. Learning letter names and sounds seems straightforward;
however, children whose home language is logographic will also be learning a
new alphabet system, while children from other alphabetic languages may only
be learning new names and sounds for letters they have seen before. You may
need to provide more explicit instruction and more opportunities to practice
those sounds and letters that have no equivalent in children's home language,
since they may have difficulty hearing and pronouncing them. Their inability to
pronounce some sounds does not necessarily indicate lack of knowledge. While
you want to support children in pronouncing the sounds correctly by
demonstrating how to position the mouth, teeth, and tongue, be careful not to
turn the lesson into a speech lesson or to stop instruction of new letters until they
master one that is difficult to pronounce. Children who do not know letter names
and sounds, whether due to lack of instruction or because they are just learning
English, need planned instruction that provides many opportunities to see, play
with, and compare letters. Some children can learn several letters each week,
while others may only learn one. Include games, songs, and other activities that
help children identify and name letters, provide activities in which children learn
uppercase and lowercase forms of letters, and point out differences and
similarities among the letters. In addition, plan writing activities that encourage
children to practice making the letters they are learning and provide them
14

opportunities to experiment with and manipulate letters to make words and
messages (Blevins, 1998; TEA, 2000).
* Some kinds of exercises for teaching the alphabet.
(1) Listening: You can you teach students to listen. There are many
activities you can introduce to hone your students’ ability to isolate sounds they
hear on a daily basis. The skill of listening is required for students to be better
able to recognize sounds (phonemes) in words that they will be introduced to in
the months ahead. Look out for listening games in educational toy stores.
Listening is also encouraged by reading rhymes or chants and poems.
(2) Rhyming and Alliteration: As adults we recognize when words like
/gate/, /eight/, /late/ rhyme. However, for students this skill has to be practiced
and practiced before it becomes a natural process. Nursery rhymes and poems
are an excellent way to introduce rhyming and alliteration.
(3) Comparing & Contrasting Sounds of Rhyme: This step is sometimes
referred to as an 'Oddity Task' - where a child learns to spot the 'odd one out'.
This is an important step that is often overlooked. By encouraging students to
compare and spot the odd one out you are helping them fine tune their listening
skills for later on when they will need to recognize patterns and phonemes in
words. One activity I like to do is read a familiar nursery rhyme and swap things
around. students will love to 'catch you out!' as they compare the version they
know with your odd one.
For example:
Unit 8: School Things – Lesson 2
Pens
Pencils
Pen and pencils
Books and bags
Rulers and rubers
They’re school things.

They’re all new
For my new school year!
(4)Awareness of Syllables: After students become aware of words the
next step is the awareness that words are divided into parts or beats we call
syllables. An awareness of syllables will enable your students to perform
phonemic segmentation (counting out the number of phonemes in a word). One
easy game to play is to clap and count the syllables in their own name or other
family and friends names and ask "Which name has the most syllables?" or
"Which name is the longest?" My daughter is the 'longest' in our house - much to
her brothers annoyance
(5)Phoneme Recognition: Phoneme Recognition (remember a phoneme
is the name given to the smallest unit of sound in our English Language - of
which there are approx 44 sounds or phonemes) is really referring to an
awareness that the words we are saying are made up of small sounds. For
example the first phoneme in the word /cat/ is the /k/ sound. After listening to all
those nursery rhymes and poems your students will quickly begin to pick out the
15


more obscure sounds and patterns in words they are hearing. There are many
oral activities you can do to help your students have good phoneme recognition.
(6) Phoneme Spelling: This involves becoming so familiar with
phonemes (sounds) that students will be able to manipulate words by adding and
deleting phonemes at the beginning, middle and end of words to make new
words. For example /r/at, can become /p/at or /s/at because the first phoneme has
changed. Phoneme Recognition and Spelling are ongoing steps that your
students will now build on for the next few years. By committing to spend just a
few minutes each day with your students in the above steps you will be well on
the way to teaching phonics and helping them become successful readers and
spellers.

2.4. The efficiency of the research:
After applying successfully the methods and procedures to teach
phonics, the students’ progression in pronunciation can be seen clearly. The
result in the second semester of the school year 2019 - 2020 shows the increase
in the percentage of students who can pronounce correctly. What is especially
pleasing is the impact of phonics in class 4 as there are fewer students who can
not pronounce correctly than the beginning of the first semester. The
significance of the methods of teaching phonics can be seen when examining the
percentage of students with a reading age above their chronological age since
the program’s implementation. The number of students assigned to be improve
their pronunciation, especially bad students who now can pronounce more
correctly. Comparing with the result survey at the beginning, I find that the
recent result is better than the old one. Below is the result:
Class The numbers Excellen
Good
Fair
Poor
Fail
of students
t
(B)
(C)
(D)
(F)
(A)
4D
49
12 =27% 20 = 32%
27= 41%
0

0
Overall, the changing of the students’ prounciation has been a resounding
success. The consistency and clarity it has afforded in phonics teaching for
primary student has been worth the time and effort. My students are capable and
ready for explicit teaching of phonics and are highly motivated by their success
in reading ‘real’ words. These are some of experiences I researched and applied
to improve the students’ pronunciation:
- Learning two new phonemes a week provides plenty of opportunity for
revision
- Daily explicit focused teaching of phonemes with opportunities for practice
and revision is critical to student achievement.
- Using only the essential resources such as grapheme tiles, frieze posters,
picture posters, word blend cards, grapheme flash cards, my words and sounds
activity sheets, etc…initially is important as teachers gain confidence and
familiarity with explicit phonics teaching.
- Spending time revising the lesson after 5 units, at a faster pace, makes sense to
allow opportunities for at-risk students to consolidate simple alphabetic code.
16


- Listening to children blend all-through-the-word each day is vital to ensure
each sound is produced correctly and children develop the skill of blending.
- Regulary encourage students to create an atmosphere for students to learn
English.
- Do not teach the pronunciation of individual words, because in fact the
language appears not only single but in a context.
- Using modern equipments for teaching and training phonics.
- Do not teach only phonics, we ought to combine teaching pronunciation with
teaching listening and speaking.
- Be patient with students and always encourage and motivate them to learn.

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3. THE CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1. CONCLUSION
This research investigated the methods of teaching phonics for primary
students, lesson delivery and sequence of content and learning expectations used
by teachers of English at Nguyen Van Troi Primary School. This research
brings broader understanding of strategies for teaching phonics to students.The
rationale for the study stems from the need to gain greater international
perspective of the teaching of English learners. Results reflect analysis of
classroom observation field notes, face-to-face interviews with forty nine
students of class 4D.
To sum up, The research provides some methods to improve teaching
phonics for primary student in order to form the habit of using English words
that contributes to improve the quality of students' listenning skill and speaking
skill in particular and English for academic subjects in general. This research
does reveal some promising practices but more research is needed. in this
research, I introduced the basic knowledge about phonics and some methods of
teacing it. I also have surveyed the result of the the teaching and learning phinics
of students at my school.
3.2. RECOMMENDATIONS
3.2.1. To the leaders:
To enhance the capacity of teachers in teaching English, the leaders
should organize the training courses for the English teachers regularly. Through
the training courses, teachers have the opportunity to exchange and learn their
experience.
3.2.2. To the teacher:
Teachers play a critical role in supporting language development. Beyond

teaching children vocabulary and grammar, they need to help children learn and
use aspects of language associated with phonics. They need to help them
become more aware of how language functions in various modes of
communication across the curriculum. They need to understand how language
works well enough to select materials that will help expand their students'
linguistic horizons and to plan instructional activities that give students
opportunities to use the new forms and modes of expression to which they are
being exposed. In order to improve the students’ pronunciation, teachers need to
have these qualities:
- Being creative and active in teaching English, especially in teaching
phonics.
- The exercise allows clear practice in production and reception and gives
concise feedback to individual learners as to where their problms lie in these
areas and how to repair them. Often these are very simple physical questions
such as not roundig the lips as in / u: / in fool , which the teacher can help them
focus on.
- This, in turn, allows discussion on learning strategies for pronunciation
which can be drawn up it the classroom.
18


- It is a communicative exercise as it involves disagreement, repair and
agreement among other things.
- Many language learners feel self concious and negative about their
pronunciation . To effectively deal with this question in the class and enable
learners to see an improvement, is invariably a great psychological boost.
- I have used these activities with learners from many different cultural
and language backgrounds and they have invariably been seen as both very
useful and fun.
- As teachers, we are often not the best judges of the accuracy of our

students' pronunciation.We are accustomed to it and usually very tolerant when
in general, native speakers are not. Such exercises help us to be more aware of
real problems learners have in their oral production and to help to correct them.
- Such activities should be an integral part of any language teaching
programme as they make pronunciation an active element of the learning
process and focus learners on the language they are producing.
With the implementation of foreign language instruction under the
direction of communication and respect not only vocabulary and grammar , but
also phonetic, I found myself alone has obtained some positive results.
However, due to the characteristics of the subjects are subjects requiring
specialized attention of learners , gifted language learning environment and need
to communicate effectively in English of topics should not met as expected.
Thanh Hoa City, April 1st 2021.
I swear this thesis is written by me without copy content from others.
Headmaster’s signature

Written by

Kieu Thi Hoa

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