Teaching EFL Beginning Readers

Abstract

本研究透過課程分析，探討東亞地區英語文閱讀啟蒙教育之規畫。本研究將東亞五個教育體系─中國、香港、日本、南韓、台灣之英語文閱讀啟蒙課程目標，以現今英語文啟蒙教育之理論，依以下向度加以分析：（一）閱讀啟蒙基本要素：如書面文字形式、字母、字母與發音對應知識、音韻覺識；（二）字詞分析策略：如熟識字、解碼（字母拼讀）、上下文推測、字首、字尾、及字根；（三）閱讀流暢策略：如朗讀；（四）閱讀理解策略：如推測、監控、讀懂大意等。研究結果發現，閱讀啟蒙之基本要素與策略，如字母發音對應知識與解碼，已普遍列入東亞五個教育體系的閱讀啟蒙目標。但音韻覺識則普遍被忽略。因此，本研究建議，英語外語教學界需有系統的研究早期閱讀發展，以作為未來課程規劃之參考。

This paper explored English early reading education in East Asia by examining English curricula for beginning readers. Five EFL curricula in East Asia – China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were investigated. Based on current theories of early reading development, the beginning-stage reading objectives in these EFL curricula were analyzed according to (1) components of early reading, such as conventions of print, letter knowledge, grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and phonological awareness; (2) word recognition strategies, such as sight words, decoding, contextual guessing, as well as affixes and roots; (3) fluency strategies, such as oral reading; (4) reading comprehension strategies, such as prediction, monitoring, skimming, etc. The results show that skill and knowledge essential to word recognition development such as decoding and grapheme-phoneme correspondences were included in the majority of the EFL curricula examined. However, phonological awareness, an important component skill to the development of decoding, was not found in most of the EFL curricula analyzed. Further research needs to investigate the role that phonological awareness plays in EFL children's decoding development.