The effects of phonemic awareness and sense group reading on elementary school students’ English reading fluency

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of phonemic awareness and sense group reading on elementary school students’ reading fluency. For this study, the following research questions were established: 1) How do phonemic awareness and sense group reading individually make an impact on word recognition accuracy, reading rate, and prosody 2) Does the order of these two types of instruction make any difference with regards to word recognition accuracy, reading rate, and prosody 3) What are the perceptions of participants regarding phonemic awareness instruction and sense group reading. To answer the research questions, the participants, 28 sixth graders, were assigned into two experimental groups and participated in a 13-week blended learning course based on Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (Stahl & Heubach, 2005) and Evidence-Based Fluency Instruction (Reutzel, 2012). The data collected for this study include pre- and post-reading fluency assessments, questionnaires, and students’ learning logs. The findings of the study revealed that both experimental groups had the significant improvement in reading fluency. In particular, phonemic awareness instruction increased word recognition accuracy; and sense group reading affected prosody development. In particular, phonemic awareness instruction followed by sense group reading led to increased word recognition accuracy and prosody.