Activities for developing phonemic awareness, a pre-reading skill, in EFL students of the third grade at Santana K-12 School

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study investigates the effects of training EFL third graders in sound isolation, phonemic blending, and phoneme segmentation activities for developing Phonemic Awareness (PA). Twenty-five participants were first trained in sound isolation activities, then in phonemic blending and finally in phoneme segmentation tasks. The words employed in the study were chosen basing on the children’s first school curriculum block. The results were substantial regarding the causal relation between training in sound isolation, phonemic blending, and phoneme segmentation activities and development of Phonemic Awareness (PA) since participants achieve a grade of 10.542 over 12 points. Therefore, it is stated that training children in these skills help to develop Phonemic Awareness. Also, in spite of being EFL learners, children develop mastery of these skills as native-English speakers do.