International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue VI, June 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Using Synthetic Phonics to Improve the Sound Discrimination and Reading Comprehension Skills of Basic Eight Students at Oyoko Methodist Junior High School

Albert Bekoe Mensah¹, Derrick Nii Quarcoopome Sackey², Paul William Obeng^3
1Department of Languages, SDA College of Education, Koforidua, Ghana
²Department of Social Sciences, SDA College of Education, Koforidua, Ghana
³Department of Social Sciences, SDA College of Education, Koforidua, Ghana

Abstract: This study was conducted to examine the effect of using synthetic phonics on Basic Eight students’ ability to discriminate between the sounds of the letters of the English alphabet and answer reading comprehension questions correctly. The purposive sampling technique was used to sample the forty-four students from the Basic Eight class at Oyoko Methodist Junior High School for the study. The researchers used a combination of observation and teacher-made-test as instruments for the data collection exercise. Data gathered were analysed using frequencies, percentages, means, and range. The study concluded that the use of synthetic phonics is an effective intervention to aid the Basic Eight students of Oyoko Methodist Junior High School to discriminate between the sounds of the letters of the English alphabets and answer reading comprehension questions correctly. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that the head teacher of Oyoko Methodist Junior High School should organize school-based in-service training for the teachers on the use of the synthetic phonics approach to enable the teachers of English language to become conversant with the skills of using the approach to teach effectively.

Keywords: Synthetic phonics, Sound discrimination, Reading comprehension,

I. INTRODUCTION

From the psycholinguistic point of view, reading is not primarily a visual process. There are two kinds of information involved in reading. First is visual information, that is, the one that comes from the printed page. The second is non-visual information, that is, the information that comes from the brain of the reader (Ngabut, 2015). Visual information can be seen in a text or any form of writing, while non-verbal information is what the reader already knows about reading, about language, and about the world in general (Smith as cited by Ngabut, 2015). This means that being able to see sentences in front of the eyes is not enough. One must know something about the language in which the material is written, about its subject matter, and about reading itself.
Reading is a process of thinking actively in order to unlock or understand the idea an author portrays (Shihab, 2011). It involves connecting an author’s idea to what one already knows and appropriately coordinating all the ideas for

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