Abstract：English phonological awareness is one of the meta-linguistic awareness which is an influential factor in English acquisition. In western countries, Research on phonological awareness and language acquisition play an important role in the field of psychological linguistic. However, a number of studies focus on the relationship between phonological awareness and English reading, listening, spelling etc. but few on the relationship between phonological awareness and initiatives for learning English. Moreover, the subjects are mainly children and not many studies have been concerned with teenagers. Therefore, I chose the relationship between English phonological awareness and initiatives for learning English as the research topic, middle school students the subject, trying to discuss what is the significance of improving middle school students’ English phonological awareness and promoting their English learning initiatives in English teaching.

This paper has five main parts: introduction, literature review, research questions and methodology, data analysis and discussion, conclusions. In order to figure out the relationship between English phonological awareness and initiatives for learning English, I adopted the methods of questionnaire and ability test. Both of the subjects are senior students from Longquan No.2 Middle School, Chengdu City.

There are three major conclusions I got in this study. First, Middle school students’ motivation of learning English is above average, in general, and their effort degree is the major motivation. Second, on motivation of learning English and English phonological awareness, there is no significant difference between different genders, and it may because that during the period of middle school, the difference in psychological and physiological characteristics between different genders is not obvious, and it may turn into a big difference when it comes to the period of high school. Third, the motivation of learning English has significantly and positively correlated with the English phonological awareness. According to the results of regression analysis, the motivation of learning English has predictive effect on English phonological awareness.

The result of the study shows that, in china, teachers may try to start from improving students’ English phonological awareness, thus to improve their English competence, and meanwhile, promoting English learning initiatives of the students, thus to make the teaching process more effective.

Key words: phonological awareness; English learning initiatives; English teaching

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One   Introduction-6

1.1 Background of the study-6

1.2 Necessity of the study-7

Chapter Two   Literature review-8

2.1 The theoretical research of phonological awareness-8

2.1.1 Definition of phonology-8

  2.1.2 Definition of phonological awareness-8

  2.1.3 Studies on phonological awareness-9

2.2 Initiative of learning English-10

Chapter Three   Research questions and methodology-11

3.1 Research question-11-

3.2 Subjects-11

3.3 Instruments-11

3.3.1 The scale of the initiative for learning English-12

3.3.2 Phonological awareness test-12

3.3.3 Procedures-13

3.4 Data analysis-14

3.5 Research results-14

3.5.1 The results of scale of the subjects’ initiative for learning English-14

3.5.2 The results of the subjects’ phonological awareness test-15

3.6 The relationship between English phonological awareness and initiative for learning English-16

3.6.1 The results of correlation analysis between English phonological awareness and initiative for learning English-17

3.6.2 Results of regression analysis between English phonological awareness and initiative for learning English-17

Chapter Four   Data analysis and discussion-18

4.1 Characteristic analysis of middle school students’ English learning initiative-18

4.2 The analysis of middle school students’ English phonological awareness test-19

4.3 The correlation analysis between English phonological awareness and initiative for learning English-20

Chapter Five   Conclusions-20

5.1 Conclusions-20

5.2 Suggestions-20

5.3 Limitations-21

Bibliography-22

Acknowledgements-23

Appendices-23

Appendix 1   the Questionnaire-24

Appendix 2   the Phonological Awareness-25