Phonics-based Analyses of the Elementary English Words in the 2022 Revised National Curriculum

Sung, Min-Chang

doi:10.30961/lr.2024.60.2.177

Lang. Res. 60(2):177-197

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2024.60.2.177

Article

Phonics-based Analyses of the Elementary English Words in the 2022 Revised National Curriculum

Min-Chang Sung ¹ ^, ^*

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹Gyeongin National University of Education

^*Corresponding Author : Associate Professor, Department of English Education, Gyeongin National University of Education, 13910, Sammak-ro 155 Anyang-si Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, E-mail: mcsung@ginue.ac.kr

ⓒ Copyright 2024 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jul 03, 2024 ; Revised: Jul 17, 2024 ; Accepted: Aug 15, 2024

Published Online: Aug 31, 2024

ABSTRACT

This study examined the 800 elementary English words in the 2022 revised national curriculum to provide a comprehensive vocabulary profile that supports phonics education for young learners. Its focus was on analyzing the distributions of sound and letter patterns in first-syllable onsets and final-syllable rhymes, which are central components of phonics instruction. The implications of these sound-letter variations for teaching onsets and rhymes at the elementary level were also discussed. Analysis of the onsets revealed 33 and 30 sound-letter pairs for single-consonant (/k/-‘c’) and consonant-cluster onsets (/st/-‘st’), respectively. For rhymes, 32, 177, and 93 sound-letter pairings were identified for those without a coda (/i/-‘y’), with a single-consonant coda (/ər/-‘er’), and with a consonant-cluster coda (/ænd/-‘and’), respectively. Both onsets and rhymes frequently involved one-to-many relationships between sounds and letters, such as /s/ corresponding to ‘s’, ‘c’ and ‘sc’, highlighting the complexity of elementary English phonics.

Keywords: phonics; 2022 revised national curriculum; elementary English words; onset; rhyme

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