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Phonological Awareness as Panacea for Spoken English Language beyond the ClassroomByOYINLOYE, Comfort Adebola Ph.DDepartment of Education, School of Education and HumanitiesBabcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State. HYPERLINK "mailto:oyinloyec@babcock.edu.ng" oyinloyec@babcock.edu.ng Phone Number: 08033706948AbstractThis study investigated the phonological awareness as a panacea for spoken English Language beyond the classroom. The population for the study were all the Primary II pupils in Ikenne-Remo Local Government, Ogun State, Nigeria. Primary II was chosen for the purpose of laying their phonology foundation early enough so that they will be able to use English language effectively. Purposive sampling technique was used to select two primary schools. Thirty (30) pupils were selected from the two school through balloting. Five English Language teachers were randomly selected from each of the two selected schools. Phonological Awareness Test, a spoken English Test (pronunciation test) and questionnaire were the instruments used to collect data. The instruments were validated and Cronbach Alpha technique was used to determine the reliability coefficients of the instruments at 0.97, 0.86 and 0.88 respectively. The data collected were analyzed using pie charts, frequency counts, percentages and Spearman's Correlation Statistics. The findings revealed that the pupils have a low performance in the tasks related to the words awareness; it was also revealed that substituting different sounds for familiar sounds constitutes a lot of unintelligible communication. There is a significant relationship between the phonological awareness and the pupils’ spoken English. It was recommended that teachers help pupils in their English learning from simple word reading to improve their phonological awareness. Keywords: Phonological Awareness, Panacea, Spoken English, Classroom, PupilsIntroductionThe importance of pronunciation cannot be undermined as observed by Kochaksarie and Makiabadi (2018). In their submission, learners with proper pronunciation are more likely to be understood even if their knowledge of grammar or vocabulary is weak, whereas learners with lousy pronunciation will be misunderstood, even if they are good at grammar or vocabulary. Gilakjani (2012) has earlier stated that learners with poor pronunciation will be undermined in their speech not withstanding their self-confidence and their social interactions. Moreover, there is widespread agreement that phonological skills such as perceiving sounds in speech, identifying rhymes, and blending and segmenting words are the foundation for learning to read and write. In their different investigations, Otaiba, Puranik and Curran (2009) and Oyinloye (2013) make us to understand that the early mastery of phonological and alphabetic skills lays the foundation for successful reading development. More so, Lewis, Shriberg, Freebairn Hansen, Stein Taylor & Iyengar (2016) show a converging evidence that the more sensitive a child is to the component sounds (e.g. syllables, rhymes, phonemes), the better a reader becomes, regardless of factors such as intelligence, receptive vocabulary, memory skill, and social class. This study therefore seeks to investigate the importance of phonological awareness to the spoken English of primary school pupils in Ikenne-Remo Local Government.While Preston & Edwards (2010) see phonological awareness as the ability to think, reflect and consciously manipulate the sounds of speech, Zhang & Lee (2017) view it as the ability to be attentive or awake to the sound units in spoken language. Phonological awareness skills range from simple perception of word extension and its similarities, to more complex skills such as segmentation and manipulation of syllables and phonemes (Gon?alves, Neves, Nicolielo, Crenitte, Lopes-Herrera, 2013). Santos and Befi-Lopes (2012) found that the better the performance in phonological awareness tasks, the less spelling errors are observed in the written text. This denotes how much phonological awareness is important in the spelling of words. Kochaksarie and Makiabadi (2018) defined phonological awareness as the speaker’s sensitivity to the phonological characteristics of a language. By implication, it involves both basic units of a language such as phonemes and larger units, and rhymes and syllables. Phonological awareness is sensitivity to the sound structure of language. Wasserstein and Lipka (2019) state that phonological awareness is the ability to isolate, delete, or manipulate different sub-lexical units within a word, such as syllables, onset-rimes, body-coda, and phonemes. Phonological awareness is the ability to be conscious of the sound units in spoken language which is considered to be highly related to literacy and reading abilities in transparent languages like English. Spoken language can be broken down in many different ways, including sentences into words and words into syllables (e.g., in the word sister, /sis/ and /ter/), onset and rime (e. g., in the word broom, /br/ and /oom/), and individual phonemes (e.g., in the word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/). Manipulating sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting syllables or sounds (e.g., say ‘cap’; say it without the /k/; say ‘cap’ with /t/ instead of /k/). To be phonologically aware means having a general understanding at all of these levels. Phonological awareness is important because it requires the readers to notice how letters represent sounds; gives readers a way to approach sounding out and reading new words; helps readers understand the alphabetic principle (that the letters in words are systematically represented by sounds); it is also the primary predictor of early reading and spelling skills in kindergarten through secondary schools. The most common barrier to learning early word reading skills is the inability to process language phonologically (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 2019). Moreover, developments in research and understanding have revealed that this weakness in phonological processing most often hinders early reading development for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher, Shaywitz, Shankweiler, Katz, Liberman, Stuebing, Francis, Fowler, & Shaywitz, 2014).Language development research shows extensive investigations on phonological awareness, yet most of them have concentrated on the L1 acquisition. The development of phonological awareness in children begins with sensitivity at the syllabic level, and moves to sensitivity at the onset-rime level, and eventually to sensitivity at the phoneme level. It has been found in many studies that children with high levels of phonological awareness were better at reading and writing in their L1 (Wolter & Pike, 2015). Wolter and Pike (2015) found that phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary contribute to actual word spelling in teenager native speakers of English. Wasserstein and Lipka (2019) examined the development of phonological awareness (PA) skills among Hebrew-speaking kindergarten children. The participants of the study were 41 native Hebrew-speaking children (28 boys), ages 5–6, who were recruited from two kindergarten classrooms. A battery of cognitive, early literacy, and language measures were administered and ten PA skills were examined extensively. The results demonstrated the rapid growth of PA skills from Early K to End K. The participants were significantly better at manipulations at the syllable level, as compared to phonemes or consonants. Furthermore, deletion of a final consonant was found to be easier for them than deletion of an initial consonant. A strong correlation between letter naming and PA was found at End K. Regression analyses demonstrated that letter naming and executive functioning at Early K were the most significant predictors of PA at Early K, and that letter naming was the most significant predictor at End K.In their exploration on the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ explicit phonological awareness, their foreign accent and speech comprehensibility as perceived by native and non-native English speaking EFL teachers, Kochaksarie & Makiabadi (2018) discovered a significant correlation between the learners’ phonological awareness and perception of foreign accent. The same was true about the correlation between phonological awareness and speech comprehensibility. Furthermore, a strong positive correlation was found between foreign accent and comprehensibility, suggesting that foreign accent could affect comprehensibility of L2 speech. Wise, D’ Angelo and Chen (2015) investigated the sustained effectiveness of phonological awareness training on the reading development of 16 children in French immersion who were identified as at-risk readers based on grade 1 English measures. The intervention program provided children from three cohorts with supplemental reading in small groups on a withdrawal basis. Children in the experimental group (n=5) received English phonological awareness training in combination with letter-sound correspondence instruction twice per week for 18consecutive weeks, while those in the control condition (n=7) engaged in English vocabulary-building activities. The finding of the study showed a significant gain after the training and maintained for 2 years on both French phonological awareness and French word reading skills for the experimental group. It has been discovered in the reviewed literature that much has not been achieved in the area of phonology on the phonological awareness as panacea for spoken English language beyond the classroom.Theoretical FrameworkThe Psycholinguistics Grain Size Theory The Psycholinguistics Grain Size Theory was first put forward by Ziegler and Goswami in 2005 and was defined as “a cross-language reading theory that focuses on the grain size of lexical units which are converted into phonological structures during visual word recognition in different orthographic systems” (2005, p. 3). It can be seen as a framework within three dimensions of spelling-to-sound mappings, availability, consistency and granularity. In accordance with the Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory, reading development is closely connected to phonological development (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Phonological development is the base of reading, and thus understanding the process of phonological development is of great importance for understanding reading development. Supporting this theory, Yeung, Siegel and Chan (2013) on their investigation on the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language, indicated that children who received the phonological awareness instruction performed significantly better than the comparison group on English word reading, spelling, phonological awareness at all levels and expressive vocabulary on the posttest when age, general intelligence and the pretest scores were controlled statistically. Giambo and McKinney (2004) determined whether a phonological awareness intervention promoted oral English proficiency more than a story-reading condition for Spanish-speaking kindergarten children. The findings of the study revealed that phonological awareness instruction promotes oral English proficiency for Spanish-speaking kindergarten children.In their investigations on the spelling errors of school children and reading, vocabulary interrelate with phonological awareness, Donicht, Ceron and Keske-Soares (2017), Zhang & Lee (2017) submitted a correlation between pupils’ phonological awareness and their spelling and, writing effectiveness. Musa and Balami (2016) determined the effects of training in phonological awareness skills on the reading performance of dyslexic children in primary schools in Maiduguri Metropolis. The results reveal that there is significant effect of the training in phonological awareness skills on the reading performance of the dyslexic children.In a similar way, knowing reading development makes it possible to understand skilled reading. Since languages differ in both phonological structure and consistency, the grain sizes of lexical representations and reading strategies will also be different. As a result, skilled reading in different orthographies will be influenced by these differences too. Psycholinguistics Grain Size Theory of reading has two main proposals as follows. Firstly, differences in phonology and orthography will cause early difficulty in reading acquisition. Since phonology and orthography favor different grain sizes and each language has its own consistency, phonology usually prefers larger grain sizes, while orthography prefers small grain sizes. Also, in languages that are consistent, children are more likely to acquire small grain size of phonemes without much trouble. However, in languages that do not have consistent letter-sound correspondences like English, or languages that do not show grapheme-phoneme correspondences like Chinese, additional correspondence rules for bigger grain sizes (words, syllables and rimes) need to be learned. Secondly, what is important is that in this process, phonological recording skills and reading strategies are also developed in accordance with orthographies.Research QuestionsTo guide the study, the following research questions were posed:What is the level of phonological awareness of the primary II pupils in Ikenne-Remo Local Government?What are the perception of the English teachers towards the strategies for teaching phonological awareness in Ikenne-Remo Local Government?Is there any significant relationship between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken English in Ikenne-Remo Local Government?HypothesisThere is no significant relationship between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken English in Ikenne-Remo Local Government.MethodologyThe population for the study comprised all primary II pupils in Ikenne-Remo Local Government, Ogun State of Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was used to select two primary schools in the local government. Thirty (30) pupils were selected through balloting from the two selected schools (15 pupils from each of the two schools). Five English Language teachers were randomly selected from the two selected schools, therefore, the sample of the English Language teachers is 10. A Phonological Awareness Test, a spoken English Test (pronunciation test) and questionnaire were used as the instruments for collecting data. The Phonological test consisted of 20 questions which were made up of questions on word awareness (5 items), syllable awareness (5 items), onset-rime awareness (5 items), and phoneme (5 items). The spoken English Language test (pronunciation test) comprised of a word list and a set of sentences which the pupils read out to the researchers. The questionnaire was made up of six items on the English Language teachers’ perceptions on the strategies for teaching phonological awareness. The research instruments were validated by two experts in Linguistics, English Language and Educational Measurement and Evaluation and from their comments and recommendations, some of the items were modified and re-worded. Cronbach Alpha technique was used to determine the reliability coefficients of the Phonological Test, Spoken English Language Test and Teachers’ Questionnaire which yielded 0.97, 0.86 and 0.88 respectively. The data collected were analyzed using pie charts, frequency, percentages, and Spearman rank Correlation Statistics. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significant.ResultsResearch Question One: What is the level of phonological awareness of the primary II pupils in Ikenne-Remo Local Government ?Table 1: Mean Score of the Phonological Awareness Test of Primary II School PupilsItemMeanStandard DeviationWord Awareness4.82.8Syllable Awareness2.71.2Onset-rime Awareness3.52.3Phoneme Awareness2.91.4Grand Mean3.51.9Table 1 shows the items that make up the phonological awareness test with scores coded from 1 to 20. Table 1 also shows that the grand mean of 3.5 is less than the criterion mean of 10 (average score) and this shows that the participants have a low performance in the tasks related the word awareness, syllable, onset-rime and phoneme. Research Question Two: What are the perception of the English teachers towards the strategies for teaching phonological awareness?Table 2: English Language Teachers’ Perception on the Strategies for Teaching Phonological AwarenessS/NItemsMean Standard Deviation1.Making children to understand that spoken language contain words3.651.532.Practice rhyming by introducing reading stories and poems with the child3.691.623.Breaking up words into syllables or chunks (syllable Division)3.61.614.Pulling apart words into different sounds (Sound Segmentation)3.531.635.Identifying the beginning and ending sound in a word3.591.566.Activities like substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song3.481.54Grand Mean3.591.58Table 2 shows the English Language teachers’ perception on the strategies for teaching phonological awareness. The table 3 shows that all the items have means greater than criterion mean of 2.5. Moreover, the grand mean of 3.59 is greater that the criterion mean of 2.5. This shows that all the items are the strategies which the English teachers perceived to be used in teaching phonological awareness of the pupils so as to improve on their spoken English.Hypothesis One: There is no significant relationship between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken EnglishTable 3: Spearman Ranking Correlation (rho) of phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken EnglishVariableNrSig. (2-tailed)Phonological Awareness Test300.720.000Spoken Englishα = 0.05Table 3. shows the correlation between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken English. The table also shows that the correlation coefficient is 0.72, this means that the relationship is high and also positive. Testing the hypothesis at 0.05 significance, the p-value (0.000) is less than the alpha value of 0.05, showing that there is a significant relationship. Conclusively, there is a significant relationship between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken English.Discussion of FindingsThe finding of research question one revealed that the participants have a low performance in the tasks related to the word awareness, syllable, onset-rime and phoneme. The finding of this study is in agreement with the findings of Llombart-Huesca (2019), who investigated on a subset of errors found in Beaudrie’s (2012) corpus of Spanish heritage language learners’ (SHL) misspellings: errors involving vowel omission, addition, and transposition. Eighty-one SHL participants completed one language proficiency task and three PA tasks involving the contrast between monophthong and diphthongs in real words and pseudo-words. The finding of the study revealed that vowel misspellings involving the letters ‘e’ and ‘I’ are not due to orthographic interference of English spelling, but rather to difficulties in phonological segmentation and discrimination of these vowels.Findings from research question 2 revealed that the strategies for teaching phonological awareness are make children understand that spoken language contains words, practice rhyming by introducing reading stories and poems with the child; syllable division; sound segmentation; identifying the beginning and ending sound in a word; and substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song. The finding of this study is in line with the finding of Yopp (2012), who listed the five strategies for teaching phonological awareness which are based on data analysis of student needs which include: recognizing rhymes, generating rhymes, identifying phonemes, manipulating phonemes, and segmenting phonemes.Results from hypothesis one revealed that there is a significant relationship between the phonological awareness of primary school pupils and their spoken English. This means that the low performance in phonological awareness also lead to low performance in spoken English. The finding of this study is in agreement with the finding of Fletcher and Buckly (2002), who investigated the phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome with varying levels of reading ability and found a significant positive correlation between phonological awareness and reading, spelling competence, ability to spell non-words and non-verbal measures. The result of this study is also in agreement with the finding of Kochaksaraie and Makiabadi (2018), who explored the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ explicit phonological awareness, their foreign accent and speech comprehensibility as perceived by native and non-native English speaking EFL teachers and found that there is a strong correlation between the learners' phonological awareness and evaluation of their speech accent and comprehensibility,ConclusionBased on the findings of this study, it is concluded that phonological awareness is a panacea for spoken English Language beyond the classroom. It signifies that early and systematic instruction in phonological awareness improves early spoken English, reading and spelling skills. Phonological awareness skills are the basis for spoken English and without this important skill, potential spoken English difficulties and reading difficulties might occur in the early reading stage. A child who has strong and solid phonological skills will have a strong spoken English foundation to develop with.RecommendationBased on the findings and conclusion, the following recommendation was made:Teachers of English language in primary schools in Ikenne-Remo Local Government should introduce the sounds of English language to the pupils early enough for the purpose of laying their foundation in phonology properly.The government should also encourage the course material writers in English language to include the aspect of phonetic and phonology in the course books used by the pupils for better foundation. ReferencesBeaudrie, S. (2012). A Corpus-Based Study on the Misspellings of Spanish Heritage Learners and their Implications for Teaching. Linguistics and Education, 23, 135-144.Celce-Murcia, M.; Brinton, D. M.; Goodwin, J. M. & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (2nd ed.). 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Technology and Textual Instructions as Determinants of Students’ Reading Effectiveness in Nigerian Secondary Schools. In Michael Onyedikhachi Akpa (Ed.) Contemporary Humanities 6(1) 1-6. Preston, J. & Edwards, M. L. (2010). Phonological awareness and types of sound errors in preschoolers with speech sound disorders. J. Speech Lang. Hear Res., 53 (1):44-60.Santos, M. T. M. & Befi-Lopes, D. M. (2012). Vocabulary, phonological awareness and rapid naming: contributions for spelling and written production. J Soc Bras Fonoaudiol., 24 (3):269-75.Wasserstein, D. & Lipka, O. (2019). Predictive Examination of Phonological Awareness among Hebrew-Speaking Kindergarten Children. Front. Psychol. 10:1809.Wise, N.; D’ Angelo, N. & Chen, X. (2015). A school-based phonological awareness intervention for struggling readers in early French immersion. Retrieved on February 26, 2020 from HYPERLINK "; , J. A. & Pike, K. (2015). Dynamic assessment of morphological awareness and third-grade literacy success. Language, Speech, & Hearing Services in Schools, 46, 112–126.Yeung, S. S.; Siegel, L. S. Chan, K. K. (2013). Effects of a phonological awareness program on English reading and spelling among Hong Kong Chinese ESL children. Read Writing, 26(5): 681–704.Yopp, K. (2012). Essential strategies for teaching phonological awareness. Retrieved on February 28, 2020 from HYPERLINK "; .Zhang, Yin-Jun & Lee, S. (2017). The relationship among English phonological awareness, reading ability and vocabulary size of Chinese high school students with learning difficulties. Modern English Education, 18(3): 25-45.Ziegler, J. C. & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 3-29. ................
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