Phonological-Based instruction to foster EFL kindergarten learners’ phonemic awareness of fricative beginning sounds

Abstract

In the Chilean educational context, very young learners are in the process of developing emergent literacy in their mother tongue, occasionally being able to transfer these skills successfully in the EFL classroom. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of proper instruction and knowledge for English teachers to foster these skills. This action research aims to explore the use of guided phonological-based instruction to promote EFL kindergarten student’s phonemic awareness of fricative beginning sounds. Its purpose is exploratory, since research on the area is scarce. Mixed methods (MMR) were used to collect and analyze the data. Twenty-five kindergarten students from a Chilean private school participated in the study, which consisted of a pre and post intervention test and five teaching sessions based on six fricative sounds presented in minimal pairs by implementing phonological-based and multisensory strategies. Findings showed that the strategies enhanced the participants’ phonemic awareness of fricative beginning sounds, in terms of identification and pronunciation of sounds (1) in isolation and (2) in words as beginning sounds, (3) sound and image association and (4) sound and letter association. This last phonemic awareness feature was the most achieved by the participants, who also showed a positive perception towards the intervention.

Keywords: very young learners; phonemic awareness; phonological based instruction; kindergarten; beginning sounds; emergent literacy.