The Phonological Awareness of Chinese Learners in the Reading of English

Running Head : Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness

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Table of Contents

TOC \o "1-3 " \h \z \u HYPERLINK \l "_Toc8 " Introduction PAGEREF _Toc8 \h 3

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc9 " Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc9 \h 5

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc0 "Pinyin " role in learning PAGEREF _Toc0 \h 11

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc1 " English vocabulary knowledge to reading proficiency PAGEREF _Toc1 \h 13

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc2 " Concerns Chinese Have In Reading English PAGEREF _Toc2 \h 14

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc3 " Relevance of Phonics and Alphabets PAGEREF _Toc3 \h

17

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc4 " Development of Phonological Awareness PAGEREF _Toc4 \h 20

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc5 " Visual skills and Word-Decoding Skills PAGEREF _Toc5 \h 25

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc6 " Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc6 \h 28

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc7 " References : PAGEREF _Toc7 \h 30

Introduction

People who function in more than one language use these languages in diverse contexts and with varying frequency . In different contexts , they might feel pressure to use one or the other language . They also may use these languages only orally or also in written form

In the United States several languages are commonly spoken and used English is the language of the government , education , business , and in the world of work . English is the major language of the media . It is the language of signs , directions , and most written expression in the environment . Other languages are spoken typically in small communities usually in addition to English . They are used in the home , ethnic neighborhoods , sacred institutions , and local media . There is , however little public use of these languages outside the instantaneous ethnic community . Many members of ethnic groups do not know or use their heritage language . Fifteen of California 's Hispanics do not even speak Spanish (Hodgkinson , 2001 ,

. 3 . The majority of students in Angela 's class used more English than Spanish

Yamada , J (2004 ) asserts Word recognition in beginning literacy poses a particular set of problems . The most significant of these is how written words represent spoken words . Writing systems were invented to communicate the spoken language , and most writing systems do this methodically , by using an alphabet , a syllabary , or a set of logographs (characters , like or ) that convey meaning . Because English is an alphabetic language , people who are learning to read English should learn the systematic correspondences between alphabetic letters (or groups of letters ) and sounds . This means that learning written language needs some understanding of spoken language (Perfetti , C .A , Liu , Y 2005 . This is not surprising when one think that writing systems are designed to convey speech

The puzzle for psychologists has been that learners , at least some learners , do experience genuine difficulties with the task of learning to read . We now know that one source of these complexities is a lack of phonological awareness . Though the ability to differentiate phonemes such as

and b is innate , the capability to become aware , or to consciously realize , that the

sound is different from the b sound is not innate

Whereas almost all learners learn to understand and produce...