Research methodology

In September 2008 a pre-test on phonics skills was conducted on 326 Primary 1 students at three primary schools

The pre-test contained two parts. The first part measured students’ ability to match spellings to pronunciations, while the second part investigated students’ ability to sound out words from their spelling

Students then followed a course based on synthetic phonics – RWI by Oxford – and studied the phonics section of the programme over the following three months

Upon completion of the first three-month stage a post-test (on the same two phonics skills) was conducted on the same students, comparing their phonics skills before and after the three-month programme. Nonsense words were used in the tests to ensure that the tests were not measuring previous knowledge

Download the test papers:   

Research results

A significant difference between the pre-test data and post-test data was found, both with respect to each of the three schools, and to the entire cohort of 326 children. Here are the test scores:

The statistical analysis confirms, in the context of this study, the effectiveness of synthetic phonics in helping young ESL children in Hong Kong to acquire English phonics skills

After the post-test, a focus group interview was conducted with the teachers concerned at one of the three schools. The teachers reported that, based on their observations of the children’s learning, and their own experience of teaching the synthetic phonics course, a faster pace of learning progress was achieved. The children showed intense interest in learning phonics and confidence in sounding out new words