earticle

영어

This study investigates the effects of finger-point reading on preschoolers' phonemic awareness and word recognition in terms of 7-year-old Korean children learning English. Finger-pointing was considered a helpful method for word recognition and phonemic awareness in early stages of reading. Researches on finger-pointing have been conducted on early learners of a mother tongue. We extend finger-point reading to a foreign language learning environment and examine whether it also can be helpful to young ESL learners to increase word recognition and phonemic awareness. An experiment was carried out with two kindergarten classes of similar literacy ability. For the experimental group, finger-point reading was applied based on the Balanced Approach (Honig 1996; Kuccer 1998; Pressly 1998); the control group was administered without finger-point reading. The results show that finger-point reading i)is more effective for letter recognition than normal reading; ii)has a more positive influence on voice to print matching; iii)facilitates the ability to remember specific words or letters from the text. To incorporate the suggestions implied by the findings of this study, teachers in balanced literacy classrooms should incorporate activities such as shared reading and subsequent finger-point reading, and ensure that there is a good balance between direct instruction and proficiency in associated skills