Phonological awareness and explicit instruction in an EFL classroom

This paper presents and discusses research that experimentally evaluated the effects of explicit phonological awareness and phonemic awareness instruction, as strategies to develop English word decoding in Spanish-speaking third graders learning English as a foreign language. Using a phonological decoding test twenty-two Uruguayan students were screened. Students were then randomly assigned to receive or not receive supplemental reading instruction focused on phonological awareness in the second language. Phonological decoding skill was assessed the first week of the semester and again in the third week of the semester. Children who received the supplemental reading instruction performed significantly better on measures of English pseudo word phonological decoding in the posttest.