Phonics Approach: A Technique in Improving the Reading Skills of the slow readers in Grade 1

of Consolacion Central School

Introduction
Reading is one of the macro skills that every learner should acquire in the primary years. It is
vital as are the other basic skills like listening, speaking and writing skills. It helps pupils in
various situations if they know how to read and be able to comprehend it. It is considered as a
stepping stone that allows an individual to understand, analyze, create, and evaluate enormous
information. A learner who fails to read well during their primary years is a big dilemma. Schools
and the teachers themselves continuously find solutions to solve this kind of predicament. Not
being able to read well affects the child's development in all areas. With a lot of solutions being
deliberated and considered, learners having problems in reading remain as one of the worries
of the teachers.
Phonics, as defined, is "a system of teaching reading that builds on the alphabetic principle, a
system of which a central component is the teaching of correspondences between letters or
groups of letters and their pronunciations" (Adams, 1990, p. 50). Phonics is a technique that
teachers use in teaching learners how to read. It allows students to understand and develop
their knowledge regarding the relationship of the written symbols, its sound and eventually its
meaning.
Children typically progress through a sequence of identified phonics skills as they learn to read
and spell—whether they learn slowly or quickly (Ehri, 2004; Moats, 1995; Templeton and Bear,
1992; Treiman and Bourassa, 2000). Using phonics as a technique in teaching reading can only
be effective if it follows a sequence of identified phonics skills and will be able to achieve
whether a learner is slow or fast to learn.
The purpose of this action research studies the causes regarding the reading difficulties of the
pupils and aims to decrease the slow readers using a phonics approach.
At the end of this study, a phonics approach will be used as a suitable technique to develop and
improve the reading skills of the slow readers.

https://www.readnaturally.com/research/5-components-of-reading/phonics