Turning HS Non-Decoders to Basic Decoders Through Sound City’s Exploring Sounds in Words: A Basis in Crafting an Intervention Plan for Reading
Philippines
Abstract
This research investigated the efficacy of Sound City’s Exploring Sounds in Words, a systematic phonics program, in changing high school non-decoders into minimal decoders. The study employed a one-group pretest-posttest design and had ten Grade 7 students from two public high schools in Nueva Ecija as participants who were labeled as non-decoders based on the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI). Participants received a four-week intervention through the use of Sound City Reading materials, and they were assessed before and after intervention on alphabet knowledge, letter-sound relation, and simple word form decoding. The findings indicated minimal change in written letter-sound identification but statistically significant improvements in oral reading proficiency in letter sounds, letter pairs, and simple sight words. Socio-demographic information showed that low parental literacy and inadequate home reading support explained the reading struggles of the participants. The research concluded that Sound City Reading is a good tool for improving decoding skills in older struggling readers and suggested its wider application as a formal intervention strategy in primary education. The results underscore the necessity of phonics-based teaching, enhanced teacher training, and increased parental engagement to tackle entrenched learning gaps in literacy.
Keywords:
decoding, phonics, reading intervention, non-decoders, Sound City Reading, literacy, secondary education, phonological awareness
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