THE EFFECTS OF PHONIC SONGS ON LETTER SOUND RECOGNITION OF

KINDERGARTEN PUPILS

A Thesis Proposal
Presented to the Faculty
Graduate School
Wesleyan University Philippines
Cabanatuan City

In partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Education (MAEd)
Major in Educational Management

By

AIMEE GAMIT
September 2018

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 ABSTRACT

The study aims to determine the effectiveness of phonic songs on letter-sound recognition
of kindergarten pupils in Daan Sarile Integrated School for the school year 2018-2019. Letter-
sound recognition is an important skill for kindergarten pupils to be able to read words and then
later on make them fast readers. The study will be using the quasi-experimental design wherein
the prettest-posttest control group design will be applied. Two sections of kindergarten pupils of
Daan Sarile Integrated School will be the respondents of the study wherein the morning session
will be the control group and the afternoon session is the experimental group. The control group
will be exposed to the traditional method of teaching while the experimental group will be
exposed to phonic songs. Percentage, frequency, weighted mean and t-test will be used for the
statistical data analysis. The findings of the study will be useful for teachers teaching letter-
sound recognition to broaden their methodologies as well as in improving the reading ability of
kindergarten pupils.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the use of phonic songs, as part of
language arts instruction, can affect the performance of kindergarten pupils in phonemic
awareness, specifically letter sound recognition. The rationale behind studying the relationship
between music and learning has been researched and evaluated for many years. Research
suggests phonemic awareness may be the connection between the use of music instruction and
the increase of reading skills (Gromko, 2005). Lamb found a significant difference in academic
achievement in children who received music instruction, as part of the language arts curriculum,
in comparison to those who did not (1993). In kindergarten, learning letter sounds is one of the
fundamental skills for acquiring the ability to read and write. This study will research the
effectiveness of using music as an instructional tool, which in the future can be used as a strategy
to support literacy instruction.

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 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Phonics instruction is a language arts program that is frequently implemented in

elementary schools all over the country. The most commonly used phonics programs are planned
and scripted, discouraging teachers from varying the lessons and leaving little room for
individuality (Milosovic, 2007). Phonics is the study of sounds and how these sounds are used to
make words. Successful phonics work depends on children listening well and speaking clearly.
Many educators do not support the phonics teaching theory. Milosovic (2007) says, “Scripted
curriculum has failed to meet the objective of increased literacy in part due to the fact that it does
not meet the needs of the individual children” (p. 28). There is also concern because many
phonics programs are focused on teaching phonemic awareness and they fail to teach the
students vocabulary, which is a vital piece of achieving reading fluency and comprehension
(Milosovic, 2007).
Early literacy research supports teaching letters and sounds within the context of
meaningful language. Children should be taught strategies for integrating the language cueing
systems as they read: meaning (semantic), sound of language (syntactic), and shapes and sounds
of letters (graph phonemic) while relying on their background knowledge about that topic
(schema theory). The rhythm, rhyme, and repetition of songs and rhymes are ideal for supporting
early reading experiences and for providing a context to develop the use of all the cueing systems
while teaching essential reading skills. The following short, engaging phonemic awareness and
phonics lessons are embedded in real language that has meaning for the child.
When the child is joyful and relaxed, their brain is the most receptive to language
learning. Encouraging children to memorize and "play" with the language of songs and rhymes,
providing multisensory and differentiated literacy instruction to support diverse language and
literacy needs. (Edge, 2014).
Understanding phonics is a critical component in a young student's ability to read.
Research studies have shown the important role phonics plays in helping students become strong
readers. The experience of young children with phonic songs increased their oral language
development and builds phonemic awareness. These prolonged rich experiences with oral

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language are important to the learner to reach their potential as readers, writers, speakers, and
thinkers. (Hall, 2014)
Phonemic instruction should include activities that focus on rhyme, syllables, onset and
rime and phonemes. For this reason, songs, charts and word sound games are ideally suited to
help students develop their phonemic awareness skills. Another dimension of phonemic
awareness instruction is the task or operation that students must perform with sounds. Matching
sounds is one of the easier tasks for students to complete. Phonics prepares students to become
strong readers as well as good writers.
In connection to this, the researcher aims to find out the effectiveness of phonic songs on
letter-sound recognition of kindergarten pupils at Daan Sarile Integrated School. Although there
are numerous phonic songs that can be used in teaching phonics, most of them are written in
English or foreign languages. Learners can better relate to phonic songs if it was written in their
native language. Therefore, the researcher decided to use 28 phonic songs written in Filipino by
Ana Liza Palioc to address the need. The result of this study will be beneficial not only to
teachers but also kindergarten pupils.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This study will be dealing with the effectiveness of phonic songs on letter-sound
recognition of kindergarten pupils. It is based on the theory of Foy and Mann which stated that
the use of rhyme and music had shown to increase phonemic and phonological awareness.
Understanding the importance of integrating phonics into reading instruction is important
because it can increase the students’ reading ability at early ages. Moreover, the use of rhyme
and phonic songs has been very beneficial in teaching-learning process. Engaging learners into
songs brings out a relaxing and comfortable environment that helps reinforce and stimulates
learners’ brain. The retention of letter names and sounds in learners mind is greatly enhanced by
listening, singing and memorizing phonic songs and rhymes. Young learners are more likely to
be attracted by the rhythm, lyrics as well as the melody of the song, which helps them to easily
recite and memorize it, and be long remembered.

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 The proposed study is also supported by the theory of Smith (2000) which states that
emergent readers hear, sing, discuss, play with, and write songs, they are building important
background knowledge that they will draw upon during later reading and writing experiences.
With each new song, students learn concepts and word meanings that they will encounter in
print.

In addition, musical activities that foster early literacy development can support early
literacy instructional goals. These goals include: children’s learning of concepts of print; a sense
of story and sequence; phonemic awareness and phonics; background knowledge and
vocabulary; basic spelling patterns; and early writing activities. These six concepts provide the
foundation for early literacy development (Fisher, et. al.).

Through phonics instruction using rhymes and music, children’s ability to identify words
will improve through the sounds of letters in isolation and teaching them to blend the sounds of
letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of words in meaningful sentences and
stories.

The researcher believes that exposing kindergarten pupils to phonic songs will improve
their letter-sound recognition skills. The research paradigm is illustrated below.

CONTROL PRETEST TRADITIONAL POST-

GROUP METHOD OF TEST
TEACHING

EXPERIMENTAL PRETEST TEACHING POST-

GROUP USING PHONICS TEST
SONGS

Figure 1 – Research Paradigm

The experimental and control groups will be composed of the kindergarten pupils of
Daan Sarile Integrated School for the school year 2018-2019. Both the control and experimental

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groups will be given a pretest in letter-sound recognition to assess their literacy skills. The
control group will be subjected to the traditional method of teaching while the experimental
group will be subjected to phonic songs. To evaluate the performance of both groups a posttest
will be given. The results of the posttest will show the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of phonic
songs in letter-sound recognition of kindergarten pupils.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study would like to determine the effect of phonic songs on letter-sound recognition
of kindergarten pupils of Daan Sarile Integrated School.

Specifically, it will seek to answer the following questions:

1. How may the comparability of the control and experimental groups be established?

2. What is the level of performance in the pretest of the:

2.1. Control group and

2.2. Experimental group?

3. Is there a significant difference in the pretest performance of the control and experimental
groups?

4. What is the level of performance in the posttest of the:

4.1. Control group and

4.2. Experimental group?

5. Is there a significant difference in the posttest performance of the control and experimental
groups?

Scope and Limitations of the Study

The study aims to determine the effects of phonic songs on letter-sound recognition of
kindergarten pupils of Daan Sarile Integrated School for the school year 2018-2019.

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Significance of the Study
The results of this study will be beneficial to the following:

Pupils. The use of phonic songs on letter-sound recognition will improve and develop the
reading abilities of kindergarten pupils and will later on make them functional readers in the
future.
Teachers. It will be an effective tool to enhance and improve the literacy skills of kindergarten
pupils.. It will also provide resources to support excellent, innovative instruction in a variety of
teaching settings.
Principals/Administrators. The result of this study will be a great help to improve the reading
abilities of kindergarten pupils and teacher’s teaching strategy in teaching letter-sound
recognition to kindergarten pupils.
Future Researchers. This study may serve as valuable source of data while conducting their
studies.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the nature of the study. It also presents the method of research
used. It further discusses the instruments used in gathering the data, the respondents of the study
and the treatment of data.

Research Method Used

The quasi-experimental research design will be employed in this study. According to
White and Sabarwal (2014), quasi-experimental research designs, like experimental designs, test
causal hypotheses. In both experimental and quasi-experimental designs, the program or policy is
viewed as an ‘intervention’ in which a treatment – comprising the elements of the
program/policy being evaluated – is tested for how well it achieves its objectives, as measured by
a pre-specified set of indicators. A quasi-experimental design by definition lacks random
assignment, however. Assignment to conditions (treatment versus no treatment or comparison) is
by means of administrator selection (e.g., by officials, teachers, policymakers and so on) or both
of these routes.

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 Quasi-experimental designs identify a comparison group that is as similar as possible to
the treatment group in terms of baseline (pre-intervention) characteristics. The comparison group
captures what would have been the outcomes if the program/policy had not been implemented.
Hence, the program or policy can be said to have caused any difference in outcomes between the
control and experimental groups.

Population and Sample Size

The respondents of the study will be the two sections of kindergarten class in Daan Sarile
Integrated school for the school year 2018-2019. The kindergarten pupils enrolled in the morning
session will be assigned as the control group while the afternoon session will be assigned as the
experimental group. Table 1 presents the breakdown of respondents.

Table 1. Number of Respondents

Group Number of Respondents

Group A (Control group) Traditional Method of
36
Teaching Letter-Sound Recognition
Group B (Experimental group) Phonic Songs
36

Total 72

Sampling Technique
The respondents will be selected using the purposive sampling method. According to
Calmorin (2000) as cited by Buras-Nadiahan (2007), this sampling procedure directly identifies
those who are participants to a certain study; those that are best fitted to give the information
needed. The criteria for choosing the respondents were the following: a) must be Kindergarten
pupils in Daan Sarile Integrated School for the school year 2018-2019 and; b) attend the morning
and afternoon class schedule;

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Instrumentation
The research instrument to be used will be the pretest and posttest assessment tool. It is
composed of a checklist given by the Department of Education, Division of Cabanatuan City.
These will be given to kindergarten pupils before and after the conduct of the study to assess
their skills and acquired learning in letter-sound recognition. The researcher will be responsible
for the assessment of the pupils
Upon organization and completion of the assessment tool and with the evaluation to be
made by the research adviser and other experts, the assessment and evaluation on letter-sound
recognition will be conducted..

Data Gathering Procedures

The researcher will seek permission from the principal of Daan Sarile Integrated School
first and to the Division office of Cabanatuan City before conducting the study. After permission
will be granted, the researcher will conduct the study in the two sections.
A pretest will be administered to two groups of respondents before the conduct of the
experiment. After the pretest, the experimental group will be exposed to the phonic songs while
the control group will be subjected to the traditional way of teaching.
In the phonic songs strategy, the researcher will use the phonic songs developed by Ana
Liza Palioc since it was written in our native language.
As to the traditional method of teaching, the researcher will be using the Marungko
method in teaching letter-sound recognition.
A posttest will be given to both the experimental and control groups after the experiment
to determine if the fieldwork activities will be better than the traditional method of teaching.
The scores of the respondents in every treatment will be tallied by the researcher and
encode using the Microsoft excel.

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Statistical Treatment of Data
The following statistical tools were used for the data gathered in this study:

a. Percentage and Frequency

The formula is p = f x 100%
n
Where:
p = percentage
f = frequency
n = total number of respondents

b. Weighted Mean
To describe the performance of the two groups of respondents and their experiences
weighted mean will be used.
The formula is Wm = ∑fx
n
Where:
Wm = weighted mean
f = frequency
x = score
n = no. of scores
To determine the difference between the two groups, t-test will be used. The formula for t-test
is embedded in Statistical Package Social Sciences (SPSS).

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