The effects of teaching vowel phonograms to improve oral reading skills of fourth-year students at a private university

Abstract

The purposes of the study are to investigate the effects of teaching vowel phonograms; and to find out whether the vowel phonogram awareness has helped improve the oral reading skills of the fourth-year students at a private university in Pathum Thani, Thailand. The research was carried out using a qualitative observation methodology. There were 41 English major students divided into two groups that were selected using random sampling. One (experimental) group of 20 students was taught 20-minute vowel phonograms for five weeks including class lecture, while one (control) group of 21 students undergone the usual class lecture. Five students from the experimental group were also selected to answer the interview questions. The study instruments were teacher’s observation journal and a 15-item semi-structured open-ended interview questions. The researcher also conducted spelling and dictation quizzes for both groups using teaching tools; lesson plan, vocabulary list, and vowel phonogram chart. The data were collected in line with de Groot’s five-stage empirical evidence model. The data analyses used were basic and descriptive analyses. The findings of the study show significant effects of teaching vowel phonograms on students’ oral reading skills, an increase level of vowel phonogram awareness among students’ pronunciation were also noticed, and invaluable effects on spelling and motivation in reading were also confirmed in the study. Furthermore, to make students be fond of reading and be interested in learning the English language with ease, educators must constantly look for innovative ways that will not just assess students’ progress, but be able to detect untimely regression