Phoneme -Grapheme decoding in Phonics-Based Instruction of English as a Second Language at an Italian High School: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Recent neurological breakthroughs in our understanding of the Critical Period Hypothesis and prosody may suggest strategies on how phonics instruction could improve L2 language learning and in particular phoneme/grapheme decoding. We therefore conducted a randomised controlled-trial on the application of prosody and phonics techniques, to improve phoneme-grapheme decoding, to test these findings on a typical late high school cohort of Italians. A trial group of 24, 17-18 year-olds followed a short 10-week, 20-hour trial course and were compared to a control (14 students) preparing for the Cambridge First Certificate exam. The trial group were given phoneme/grapheme decoding material and event-related-potential reinforcement in substitution of traditional exam practice, taught from a current textbook and web-site material. Results showed that the trial-group significantly improved in both orthography (p=0.048) and pronunciation (p=0.000), in particular in the long vowel and digraph categories. Furthermore, they significantly improved in a shortened interview category (p=0.024), for lexis, discourse and pronunciation. Due to the trial’s small size, we concentrated on reducing type 2 statistical errors to a minimum. We believe that our results confirmed the neurological findings of the use of prosody in TESOL and confirmed the validity of phonics techniques for L2 teaching. We also consider that the results are sufficiently robust to warrant a full-sized trial of phonics and prosody as a valid TESOL teaching technique Los recientes avances neurológicos en la comprensión de la Hipótesis del Período Crítico y la Prosodia pueden sugerir estrategias en como la instrucción en fonética puede mejorar el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua L2 y, en particular, decodificar los fonemas/grafemas. Por tal razón, se condujo una prueba controlada aleatoria sobre la aplicación de técnicas de prosodia y fonética para mejorar la decodificación fonema-grafema y probar estos hallazgos en una cohorte normal de una escuela secundaria italiana. Un grupo de prueba de 24 estudiantes entre los 17 y 18 años siguieron un curso corto de 10 semanas de 20 horas en total y se comparó con un grupo de control de 14 estudiantes que se preparan para el examen Cambridge First Certificate. Al grupo de prueba se le entregó material para la decodificación de fonemas/grafemas y refuerzo potencial relacionado con el evento en sustitución de la práctica tradicional para el examen que se enseña de un li