Teachers' perspectives towards equipping pupils with phonological awareness to improve English proficiency

Abstract

The implementation of LINUS 2.0 LBI (Linus Bahasa Inggeris) programme saw the rise of phonological awareness in the Malaysian education system. Many researchers are of the view that phonological awareness helps young pupils to improve their English proficiency. However, there are also educators who do not adhere to this belief. Therefore, this article aims to discover teachers’ perspectives towards equipping young pupils with phonological awareness to improve their English performance. It focuses on teachers’ readiness to teach phonological awareness and conducting the LINUS 2.0 LBI programme, the effect of phonological awareness on pupils’ English proficiency, the challenges that are encountered by teaachers while implementing phonological awareness and conducting the LINUS 2.0 LBI programme, and the views of English Language teachers towards phonological awareness skills. In order to collect the data, a mixed method research design was used. 38 teachers answered an online questionnaire in order to discover their readiness to teach phonological awareness. The official LINUS 2.0 LBI results from the year 2015 until 2017 of one of the schools in Johor Bahru area were also collected in order to gauge the effectiveness of phonological awareness instruction while interviews were conducted with one foreign and seven local teachers in order to discover their views regarding phonological awareness and the challenges while implementing it in class. The findings revealed that the teachers were fully prepared to teach the skill and were able to produce positive outcomes despite the challenges they faced when implementing it.