Enhancing English Phonemic Awareness of Thai Grade One Students through Multimedia Computer-assisted Language Learning

Abstract

Abstract-This study aims to investigate whether the English phonemic awareness of Thai grade one students can be enhanced through a multimedia CALL program while learning the English language through the whole word approach. It also explores Thai grade one students' views on improving phonemic awareness through a multimedia CALL program while learning the English language through the whole word approach. The research participants were 50 Thai grade one students who were classified into good, fair, and poor groups according to their English proficiency scores. The students in each group were divided equally into experimental and control groups: 25 students in the experimental group and 25 students in the control group. Then, three participants from each good, fair, and poor group were randomly selected to participate in a semistructured interview. Three phonemic awareness tests were used to collect quantitative data obtained from the experimental and control groups. These tests were analyzed using descriptive statistics (Mean and SD) and ttest. In addition, a semi-structured interview was used to collect qualitative data with the data being analyzed using content analysis. The results of the study revealed that the experimental group made significantly greater gains in English phonemic awareness than the control group at the .001 level. Moreover, the finding of the qualitative data indicated that the students who were provided with the multimedia CALL program had positive views on enhancing phonemic awareness through this supportive tool while learning the English language through the whole word approach.

The Effects of Phonemic Awareness Instructions on L2 Listening Comprehension: A Meta-Analysis

“…One type is the activity that focused on phonemic awareness only, while the other type targeted a broader construct, phonics, in the intervention (see Figure 1). The number of studies investigating the effects of phonics (Afsharrad & Nafchi, 2015;Al Omari, 2019;Gokgoz-Kurt, 2016;Khaghaninejad & Maleki, 2015;Siegel & Siegel, 2015) was slightly larger than that of focusing on phonemic awareness (Ahangari et al, 2015;Hwang, 2016;Thajakan & Sucaromana, 2014), among the empirical studies selected for the present metaanalysis. It is, then, intriguing to examine which type of teaching activity is more conducive to L2 listening ability.…”

“…The research interest in the effects of phonemic awareness instruction on L2 listening is relatively recent when compared with the quantity of research investigating the influence of phonemic instruction on L1 reading (Ehri, 1979;Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987;Yopp, 1992). The research on the relationship between phonemic awareness instruction and L2 listening ability started appearing in the literature in the mid-2010s (e.g., Afsharrad & Nafchi, 2015;Ahangari, Rahbar, & Maleki, 2015;Al Omari, 2019;Gokgoz-Kurt, 2016;Hwang, 2016;Khaghaninejad & Maleki, 2015;Siegel & Siegel, 2015;Thajakan & Sucaromana, 2014). These studies examined whether various types of phonemic awareness interventions are useful for improving listening skills in L2 contexts.…”

“…Firstly, studies on phonemic awareness in L2 contexts have dealt with diverse age or proficiency groups. Age groups investigated range from primary school students (Thajakan & Sucaromana, 2014) to secondary school students (Afsharrad & Nafchi, 2015;Khaghaninejad & Maleki, 2015), then to university students (Ahangari et al, 2015;Al Omari, 2019;Gokgoz-Kurt, 2016;Hwang, 2016;Siegel & Siegel, 2015). Even among the studies that targeted the university level, the specific proficiency level each study investigated varied from the beginner level (Hwang, 2016), the lower-intermediate level (Siegel & Siegel, 2015), to the intermediate level (Ahangari et al, 2015;Gokgoz-Kurt, 2016).…”

“…Secondly, the previous studies also varied in the specific instructional activity implemented. The activities reported in the literature include dictation (Al Omari, 2019), transcribing (Afsharrad & Nafchi, 2015;Khaghaninejad & Maleki, 2015;Siegel & Siegel, 2015), shadowing (Hwang, 2016), and a program utilizing multimedia (Gokgoz-Kurt, 2016;Thajakan & Sucaromana, 2014). These teaching and learning activities can be divided into two categories depending on the scope of the target construct.…”

“…Fourthly, the operational definition of listening ability varied across studies. Some studies gathered evidence of listening ability by checking students' ability to discern discrete sound units (i.e., phonemes) (Gokgoz- Kurt, 2016;Siegel & Siegel, 2015;Thajakan & Sucaromana, 2014). Other studies administered a listening comprehension test to check students' understanding of the information in a passage (Afsharrad & Nafchi, 2015;Ahangari et al, 2015;Al Omari, 2019;Hwang, 2016;Khaghaninejad & Maleki, 2015;Siegel & Siegel, 2015).…”