RICELT - Margarita Irarrazabal

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND
PHONICS INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH-AS-A-
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE IN CHILE
By: Margarita Irarrázaval Jory
Masters of Arts in English Language Teaching.
Universidad de los Andes.
October 2014.
Margarita Irarrázaval Jory

PURPOSE
 The purpose of this study is to explore Chilean
teachers’ of English as a foreign language (EFL) use
of: phonological awareness (PA) tasks and phonics
during reading instruction in the early grades (kinder to
third grade).

WHY?
 Chilean Ministry of Education (Piñera’s government)
issued > the National English Strategy 2014-2030. By
2015> EFL will be a compulsory subject matter since
kindergarten. It used to be mandatory only from 5th
grade and on.
 I’m a Learning Specialist (LP) or Resource Specialist
(RSP). I work with children with mild learning
disabilities, such as ADD and dyslexia.
 In my practice in the U.S. and in Chile > witnessed
children transferring Spanish phonemes to English
graphemes and vice versa. These children were not
only those with LD but also around 30% of the EFL
class.

 Due to the NES 2014-2030 a bigger amount of young
EFL learners will need reading instruction.
 Do EFL teachers know how to teach reading in English
in order to address the gaps between the two
languages?
 SPECIFIC RESEARCH QUESTION: Do EFL teachers
incorporate phonological awareness and phonics
in early grades?

Theoretical Framework
 Phonemes are the smallest units of
speech sounds and graphemes refer to
the corresponding symbols; this is to
say, the letters of the alphabet that
represent phonemes. This relationship
is called “Alphabetic Principle”.

 Spanish’s alphabetic system > shallow orthography
(almost perfect grapheme-phoneme correspondence).
Finnish, Italian and Dutch are shallower than English
because letters are more reliably associated with
particular phonemes.
 English is deeper because the spelling-sound
correspondences are more variable. (Rainer et al.,
2001, p.36)

Language transfer
 Reading skills transfer from the first language to the second
language. Gass & Selinker (2008)
 Errors may occur to EFL students if they transfer Spanish spelling
rules to spell the English words.
 Research validates this negative transfer: “native Spanish-
speaking children spell English vowels according to Spanish
orthographic rules”(Fashola et al., 1996; Rolla San Francisco et
al., 2006,Sun Alperin and Wang, 2008”
 “it is also a definite place for the continued, systematic, and explicit
instruction of English spelling in the foreign-language classroom,
as it has remarkable differentiating and durable effects on
orthographic performance" (Perez Cañado, 2005, p. 525)

Rounding up
 Spanish: Shallow language
 English: Deep or obscure language
 Reading gaps may appear when teaching reading in
EFL to Spanish speakers

Approaches to reading
instruction
 TOP DOWN +BOTTOM UP = INTERACTIVE
APPROACH

What is good English reading
instruction?
 NRP Report 2000 > 5
essential reading sub
processes.
 Most important one>
comprehension
 This study will focus on the
first two reading
subprocesses of
Phonological awareness
and Phonics

Phonological
Awareness
 Refers to the ability to understand and manipulate the
components of oral language: words, syllables and
sounds (phonemes).
 PA needs to be developed before formal reading
instruction.
 A well-developed phonological awareness > constitutes
the basis for reading. "Children who perform well on
[PA] tasks do markedly better in early reading than
those who do not" (Rainer, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky,
& Seidenberg, 2001 p.37).

Phonological awareness tasks:
Rhyming, phoneme isolation, phoneme
identity, phoneme blending, phoneme
segmentation etc.

Phonics
 Phonics instruction > teaching alphabetic writing system. This is to
say, the relationship between phonemes, and the graphemes.
(National Reading Panel, U.S., 2000)
 In order to be successful, phonics instruction should begin after
children have internalized how to segment, blend, count, match,
delete etc. phonemes of the spoken language, all of which are
phonological awareness tasks.
 “Systematic phonics instruction makes a bigger contribution to
children's growth in reading than alternative programs providing
unsystematic or no phonics instruction" (NRP 2000, Report of
subgroups,p.94

Some relevant terms
to know
 Phonological awareness tasks:
Rhyming, phoneme isolation, phoneme
identity, phoneme blending, phoneme
segmentation etc.
 Consonant cluster (blend): : spr, str,
sk etc
 Consonant digraph: wh, th, ch, sh,etc.
(two consonants, single sound)
 Long/short vowel: a, e , i , o , u.
 Vowel generalizations: silent e > can-
cane, cod-code, rid-ride.
 Vowel digraph: ai, ee, ie, ou etc. (two
vowels, single sound)
PHONICS
PH. AW.

Similarities:
Spanish / English
 Both languages share 26 graphemes (letters). (Sun Alperin and Wang
2008 p.934).
 Both languages have 5 written graphemes for vowels.
 Short vowel sounds in English “may” be compared to Spanish
vowel sounds.
 Consonant digraph <ch>
 Consonant clusters: cr, bl, sr, fl, pr etc.
Similarities and Differences Between Spanish and English Written Language

Differences:
Spanish / English
 Almost perfect grapheme-
phoneme correspondences:
one letter > one sound.
 Spelling sound
correspondences are more
variable (Rainer et al. 2001)
 5 vowels have more than a
dozen of sounds. (Rainer et al.
2001) (Sun Alperin and Wang,
2008, p.934).
 Some consonant clusters: str,
spr, nk, thr, sk, ng etc.
 Consonant digraphs: sh, wh,
th, ph.
THE ENGLISH WRITING SYSTEM DEMANDS NEW DECODING
ABILITIES TO THE EFL LEARNER ESPECIALLY IN CONSONANT
COMBINATION, VOWEL SOUNDS AND VOWEL COMBINATION.
Similarities and Differences Between Spanish and English Written Language

Study: Survey to EFL teachers (by
email)
SURVEY’s STRUCTURE
First section:
 Educational background
 Teaching experience
 Training on the English
reading process in their
educational programs.
Second section:
 Characteristics of the school
: immersion, non immersion,
public, private, subsidized.
 Grades levels they teach,
amount EFL hours per week.
 If the workplace have provided
training in the EFL reading
process.
Third section:
 Use of phonological
awareness tasks
 Use of phonics: consonant
digraphs, letter clusters, short
and long vowel sounds and
the teaching of vowel
generalizations: Silent “e” rule
and vowel digraphs.
31 PARTICIPANTS TEACHING KINDER THROUGH 3RD GRADE

Participant’s background
12
39%
8
26%
6
19%
2
7%
1
3%
1
3%
1
3%
Undergraduate studies of
participants
Elementary
Education (English)
Preschool
Education
Elementary
Education
High-School
Education (English)
Preschool
Education (English)
High-School
Education
Other
1
3%
6
19%
6
19%
5
16%
13
42%
Years of Teaching
Experience
Less than 1 year
1 to 3 years
4 to 6 years
7 to 9 years
more than 10 years

Characteristics of the schools
where participants worked at.
1
3%
2
7%
28
90%
Type of School
Public School
Subsidized School
Private School
1
3%
1
3% 2
6%
7
23%
3
10%
17
55%
Amount of English
Instruction per Week
2
3 to 4
5 to 6
7 to 10
11 to 15
full immersion
It turned out accidentally that nearly half of participants worked at full
Immersion schools and the other half did not. Therefore, I decided to analize
the differences between EFL reading instruction on both types of participants

Use of PA tasks
Immersion / Non immersion
In average: immersion schools use of total PA tasks is 60%, similarly in non-
immersion schools is 56 %.

Phonics: letter clusters and consonant digraphs

Vowel generalizations

Professional Background of teachers working at
immersion and non-immersion schools
- 56% of teachers working as EFL educators at non-immersion schools
hold an English language specialization.
- 41% of teachers working as EFL educators at immersion schools
hold an English language specialization.
- 19% of the total of participants are high school teachers working at
early elementary grades.

Teachers’ professional studies and its relation to what
they teach
Use of PA tasks:
 70% preschool teachers
 60% of elementary teachers
 42% of English elementary teachers
 High school teachers are not shown due to the small
amount of them who participated in this part of the
survey.

they teach
Letter clusters:
 50% preschool teachers
 17% of English elementary
teachers
Consonant digraphs:
 88% of preschool teachers
teachers
High school teachers are not shown due to the small amount of them who
participated in this part of the survey.

they teach
Short vowel sounds
teachers
Long vowel sounds
 50% of the total preschool
teachers
teachers

they teach
Silent “e”
teachers
Vowel digraphs
teachers

Teacher's training on the English
Reading Process
 1 / 31 participants declared to have gotten instruction
on different English reading methods at her program of
studies (University).
 This finding may point out that English teachers are
intuitively teaching the English reading process.

Conclusions
Instruction on the English reading process:
 First hypothesis: immersion teachers will instruct the reading
process in English, however 50% of immersion teachers use
this theoretical background and its instructional implications,
and the remaining 50% did not. >>> Immersion schools do
not seem to require their teachers to teach the English
reading process.
 Teacher’s Professional specialization on English language:
Non-immersion schools: 56% of teachers. Immersion
schools: 41% of the teachers.
It is therefore wondered if immersion schools required another
kind of certification on English language to their teachers.

Conclusions
Phonics:
 Short vowel sounds were taught by an average of 65%
of the total of teachers
 Long vowel sounds by 58% of all participants.
 42% of the participants said they train students on
silent "e”.
 37% on vowel digraphs.
Silent "e" and vowel digraphs were the least instructed
strategies by both types of schools. Research
shows…“EFL native Spanish-speaking children make
more vowel spelling errors due to the interference of their
Spanish orthography” (Sun Alperin and Wang, 2008).

Conclusions
Professional studies of participants that
include PA tasks and phonics in their instruction:
1st place: elementary teachers
2nd place: preschool teachers.
3rd place: Elementary English teachers. They do not appear to
focus much on teaching the English reading process explicitly.
This fact constitutes a paradox, and makes me wonder whether
Universities are preparing English elementary teachers to
instruct the English reading process effectively.

Conclusions
 Results showed that 51% of participants are working as EFL
teachers without a proper training as EFL instructors
 19% of participants are high school teachers working at early
grades.
 Findings revealed that most teachers did not receive training on
teaching to read in English during their program of professional
studies.
 National English Strategy 2014-2030 > focuses on drastically
improving the amount of students able to communicate and to
manage English Language properly. The lack of preparation of
EFL teachers in the English reading process may hinder student’s
ability on making adequate progress on their foreign language.

Acknowledgments
 Thanks to my supervisor Pelusa Orellana for her
guidance and support.
 Thanks also to Annjeannete Martin

RICELT - Margarita Irarrazabal

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