This study examined a Pseudoword Phonics Curriculum to determine if this form of instruction would increase students’ decoding skills compared to typical real-word phonics instruction. In typical phonics instruction, children learn to decode familiar words which allow them to draw on their prior knowledge of how to pronounce the word and may detract from learning decoding skills. By using pseudowords during phonics instruction, students may learn more decoding skills because they are unfamiliar with the “words” and therefore cannot draw on memory for how to pronounce the word. It was hypothesized that students who learn phonics with pseudowords will learn more decoding skills and perform higher on a real-word assessment compared to students who learn phonics with real words. Students from two kindergarten classes participated in this study. An author-created word decoding assessment was used to determine the students’ ability to decode words. The study was broken into three phases, each lasting one month. During Phase 1, both groups received phonics instruction using real words, which allowed for the exploration of baseline student growth trajectories and potential teacher effects. During Phase 2, the experimental group received pseudoword phonics instruction while the control group continued real-word phonics instruction. During Phase 3, both groups were taught with real-word phonics instruction. Students were assessed on their decoding skills before and after each phase. Results from multiple regression and multi-level model analyses revealed a greater increase in decoding skills during the second and third phases of the study for students who received the pseudoword phonics instruction compared to students who received the real-word phonics instruction. This suggests that pseudoword phonics instruction improves decoding skills quicker than real-word phonics instruction. This also suggests that teaching decoding with pseudowords for one month can continue to improve decoding skills when children return to real-word phonics instruction. Teacher feedback suggests that confidence with reading increased for students who learned with pseudowords because they were less intimidated by the approach and viewed pseudoword phonics as a game that involved reading “silly” words. Implications of these results, limitations of this study, and areas for future research are discussed.

This thesis concerns teaching aspects of connected speech. The theoretical part briefly introduces aspects of connected speech from a phonetic and didactic point of view. It further scrutinizes the relation between teaching aspects of connected speech and the development of decoding skills. The practical part presents research aimed at the effects of explicit instruction and training in selected aspects of connected speech on understanding of authentic speech. The results indicate that twelve 45-minute lessons based on authentic TV series may have had a significant positive influence on the development of the students' listening skills. They further show that the students found the training enjoyable and useful.

Studien belyser läsinlärningens betydande roll för varje elevs läsförmåga, med syfte att undersöka vilka metoder lärare använder i den tidiga läsinlärningen för att elever ska utveckla fonologisk medvetenhet i årskurserna F-3, samt vilka strategier som skapar motivation i läsinlärningen. Det resulterade i frågeställningarna: Vilka metoder och undervisningsmoment i den tidiga läsinlärningen använder lärare inom årskurserna F-3 för att utveckla elevernas fonologiska medvetenhet?  Hur skapar lärare strategier för att underlätta för och motivera elevers läsinlärning? Bakgrund och tidigare forskning presenterar olika läsinlärningsmetoder i syfte att ge läsaren goda kunskaper om forskningsområdet. Semistrukturerade intervjuer med 14 verksamma lågstadielärare ligger till grund för vår empiri. Empirin vägs samman med tidigare forskning i diskussionsdelen och utifrån ett pragmatiskt perspektiv och “lära genom görandet” som teoretiskt perspektiv. Via empirin framkom tre teman; arbete med elevaktiva övningar, lärares struktur på läsundervisningen och lärarnas arbetssätt och mätning gällande progression av avkodningsförmågan. Resultatet visade att samtliga lärare använder olika läsinlärningsmetoder och undervisningsmoment för att skapa kreativa och elevaktiva lektioner, där strategier som rim och ramsor, stavelseträning, kooperativa övningar, Bornholmsmodellen, Fonomix och andra språklekar innefattas. Genom att utveckla den fonologiska medvetenheten förbättrades elevernas läsflyt. Studien visade att lärarna inte använder endast en läsinlärningsmetod, utan valde ut delar av metoderna som de ansåg vara mest framgångsrika och givande för eleverna. Genom att lärarna arbetade varierat och använde mycket repetition i undervisningen skapades glädje och motivation, vilket ledde till att eleverna utvecklade ett intresse genom att de fick vara delaktiga i sin egen utveckling av den fonologiska medvetenheten. / The purpose of this study was to highlight the significant role that learning how to read has in each pupil's life. This study aims to examine which methods teachers use in grades F-3, when the pupils are learning how to read, to get them to be skillful readers and form phonological awareness. The study also examines which strategies teachers use to motivate early reading. This resulted in the questions: What methods and tools do teachers use in grades F-3, when pupils are learning to read and develop their phonological awareness? How teachers use strategies to aid and motivate pupils' early reading ability? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with fourteen working primary school teachers. The study holds a pragmatic perspective, with “learning by doing” as a theoretical perspective. Through the analysis of the empirical data three themes emerged: teaching with pupil active exercises, teacher's structure of reading instruction and how teachers work and measure the progression of pupils' decoding skills. The study concluded that all teachers use different reading strategies and teaching tools to create creative and pupil engaged lessons, where work with rhymes, syllable training, cooperative exercises, the Bornholm model, Fonomix and other language games are included. When phonological awareness has developed, pupils showed better reading fluency and higher results in reading exercises. The study shows that the teachers do not only use one method when the pupils are learning to read. Instead, teachers selected parts of different methods that they consider to be the most successful, effective, and most rewarding exercises for the pupils. Because the teachers worked variedly and used a lot of repetition, joy and motivation were created, which led to the students developing an interest by being able to participate in their own development of phonological awareness.

本研究旨在探討韻尾類比訓練對國小六年級學生英文讀字能力、讀字態度之影響及其學習困難。研究分兩階段進行：第一階段為小規模之預試研究，第二階段則為正式實驗。預試研究後，研究者在教法、試題做修正改進，並經由了解學生之思考過程及學習困難後，再進一步設計更完整之訪談。 在正式實驗中，對象為桃園縣某國小二個六年級班級，並從二班各挑出25人做為實驗組及對照組。實驗組施以韻尾類比策略訓練，教材來源為學生二至五年級之教科書字彙以做為類比策略運用之基礎。對照組雖使用相同之教材，但教法則僅限於字母與音的對應關係。實驗時間為每週20分鐘(每週兩節英語之前10分鐘)，持續十週。兩組學生在教學前後各施以讀字測驗及唸讀英文字態度問卷調查，訓練後則二組各選6名做為訪談對象以進一步了解他們的學習困難。 結果發現，二組學生在讀字能力上並無顯著差別，但在讀字態度上只有實驗組有顯著正向改變。比較二組學習困難則發現對照組之困難較為複雜。此外，實驗組之低程度學生在接受類比訓練後，在讀字能力及讀字態度上相較於對照組之低程度學生有非常明顯之進步。 以上研究結果顯示，韻尾類比策略訓練可以提升國小六年級學生英文認字能力亦能正向改變學生之讀字態度，尤其對低程度學生更為有效。最後根據本研究之結果及學生之學習困難提出教學建議，供未來國小英語教師英文讀字教學時之參考。 / The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of rime analogy training on sixth graders with respect to their decoding skills, attitudinal changes towards reading English words, and perceived difficulties with word reading. The present study comprised 2 phases: the first being a small-scale pilot study, the second a formal study. The pilot functioned as a preparatory work for the formal study. In the pilot, the testing materials, instruments, and activities of the training were tested and revised to be more suitable for the formal study. From the students’ responses, the researcher obtained some insights about their thinking process and learning difficulties and this allowed for designing a more complete interview for the formal study. In the formal study, there was an experimental group and a control group, each comprised of 25 sixth graders from two classes in one elementary school in Tao Yuan county. The experimental group received rime analogy training. The teaching materials were selected from the participants’ textbooks word bank, from the second grade to the fifth grade, as a basis for making analogy. The control group was taught with the same materials but received phonics instruction that focused only on grapheme-phoneme correspondences rules. Both groups received two 10-minute training sessions a week for 10 weeks, and were administered the same pre-and post-test (generalization test) to assess decoding skills, and a pre-and post-training questionnaire on attitudes toward reading English words. After the training, six participants from each group were further interviewed to understand their thinking process and perceived difficulties. The findings are as follows. In terms of the decoding skills, the post generalization test showed that no significant statistical difference was found between the two groups. In light of the attitudinal changes, only within-group comparisons of the experimental group were significantly different. In view of perceived difficulties, the interviews revealed that the difficulties in the control group were more complicated than those in the experimental group. The most noteworthy finding is that the lowest-proficiency participants in the experimental group not only outperformed their counterparts in the control group in decoding skills, but also demonstrated far more positive attitudinal changes after the training. The findings provide supporting evidence for the value of rime analogy training in promoting students’ decoding abilities and positively changing students’ learning attitudes. The nature of students’ perceived difficulties is also discussed, in respect of which several pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are outlined.