Browsing by Author "Soriano, Marinette P."

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    Vowel instruction for spelling enhancement of Arabic-speaking learners of English
    (2016-04) Soriano, Marinette P.
    Arabic-speaking learners of English have frequent problems with word spellings that are attributed to their perplexity with the English vowels known as 'vowel blindness' or `vowel confusion.' The study aimed to address this issue by conducting vowel instruction for two months to improve their spelling performance on monosyllabic and bi-syllabic words. Vowel instruction consisted of teaching vowel pronunciation, presenting vowel letter-to-sound relationships, showing vowel spelling patterns, syllabicating words, and providing various spelling opportunities. Fifteen newly enrolled freshmen for the second tri-semester joined the English language enrichment sessions and were given Vowel Sensitivity Test (m=2.81) and vowel spelling tests (0.96 reliable using Spearman Brown) to measure their spelling performance before and after the sessions. The study revealed a significant increase in the mean scores (mpre=30.67; mpost=43.067) of the vowel spelling tests suggesting that vowel instruction was facilitative in the improved spelling performance on monosyllabic and bi-syllabic words, with more misspellings in the latter than in the former. This further indicated that strategies employed in vowel instruction were beneficial in enhancing the vowel spelling skills of learners. In spite of this, it requires constant exposure to many English words and more spelling opportunities in order to recognize vowels and spell words better.