1. The study examined the effects of a phonological awareness program on improving the English reading ability of adult students at Universiti Utara Malaysia. 2. Five students participated in a pre-test, two-week phonological awareness intervention program focusing on international phonetic alphabets, and post-test. 3. The results found that all students improved their reading time on the post-test, with time reductions ranging from 0.99% to 16.45%. This supports the hypothesis that phonological awareness can improve adult reading ability.

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Effects of A Phonological Awareness Program on Adults’ English reading ability
Muhammad Ikhwan Bin Zulkafli
School Education and Modern Language, Universiti Utara Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose: The main purpose of this study to find the effects of phonological awareness towards
adults’ English reading ability in UUM Master in Applied linguistic students.
Method: Experimental was selected to analyze the data. It was categorized into three steps
starting from pre-test, intervention and post-test.
Findings: The result depict that phonological awareness will improve reading ability among
adults.
Limitation: The sample size of this study used only five respondents. So, researcher hopes that
future researcher will add more sampling size and various levels of respondents.
Originality value: Use adult respondents from UUM Master in Applied Linguistic.
Keywords: phonological awareness, reading ability, adults, UUM Master in Applied Linguistic,
Malaysia
1.0 Introduction
There is a clear relationship between reading ability and academic success. Snow, Burns and
Griffin (1998) established that poor readers usually remain far behind in academic success and
thus, remain poor for the entire schooling years. The argument on what teaching approach is
effective to develop reading is still going on with the pendulum swinging back and forth with no
specific consensus established. Nevertheless, a strong body of research has established that
phonological awareness as a strong predictor to reading success (Adam, 1990; Beck & Juel,
1995; Chall, 1996; Stanovich, 1992). It is believed that phonological awareness will help readers,
especially in ESL (English as Second Language) context, as it will serve as a reading strategy to
reading. The motivation conducting this study because the ability to read is a necessary skill that
all adult need to possess in order to be successful in their life. If adult are unsuccessful at reading
they will unavoidably not obtain the full benefits of their educational experience.

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Besides, issue of the lack of empirical studies conducted on adult in Malaysia. For
instance, Morton (2011), she study on using children as respondent but this study will use adult
as the respondent. Nevertheless, the issue to between both variables has been continually
addressed in the literature for many years (Kirby et al., 2012; Schiff, Schwartz-Nahshon, &
Nagar, 2011). Another issue is there are some of Universiti Utara Malaysia foreigner students
especially from Arab countries do not have the reading ability thus it will damage the reputation
of the university. The main goal in this study is to identify the effects of a phonological program
on adults’ English reading ability in Universiti Utara Malaysia.
2.0 Review of related literature
2.1 Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness refers to an individual's awareness of the phonological structure, or
sound structure, of words. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later
reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much research. There were some previous
researches explained about the importance of phonological awareness.
Phonological awareness is important because it is a basis for reading. Children begin to
read by listening to others read aloud, then recognizing sounds in words, sounding words out for
themselves, recognizing familiar words, and so on. Phonological awareness, the conscious ability
to identify and manipulate speech sounds mentally, is a very important literacy skill that children
have to acquire in early years (e.g., Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). It has been demonstrated
repeatedly as a good predictor of later reading outcomes (Blachman, 1997; Muter & Snowling,
1998; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). Similarly, children who lag behind in developing

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phonological awareness skills are likely to be at-risk for reading difficulties (Bradley & Bryant,
1983; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1997).
A large volume of research has demonstrated the beneficial effects of phonological
awareness instruction on reading for English native speaking children (e.g., Bus & van
IJzendoorn, 1999; Ehri et al., 2001; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Recently, research has
shown that phonological awareness instruction promotes growth in reading among young
children from diverse linguistic backgrounds with English as a second language (L2) (Ganschow
& Sparks, 1995; Lesaux & Siegel, 2003).
2.2 Reading ability
Is there a link between phonological awareness and reading ability? The answer to this question
has been continually addressed in the literature for many years. Reading achievement is
considered the ability to comprehend and learn from written language (Torgesen, 1998). The
ability to read is a necessary skill that all children need to possess in order to be successful in
school as well as in their adult life (Moats, 2000, p. 4). If children are unsuccessful at reading
they will unavoidably not obtain the full benefits of their educational experience (Moats, 2000, p.
4). Most people would agree that teaching children to read is the foremost responsibility of
educators (Moats, 2000, p.3).
It has been widely demonstrated in research that phonological awareness significantly
correlates with reading ability. Direct evidence of this claim will be established in review of the
following studies. In a longitudinal study of phonological processing and reading performed by
Torgesen, Wagner and Rashotte (1994) it was determined that children beginning first grade with
deficits in phonological awareness skills will continually fall behind their peers in the areas of

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word recognition and decoding throughout elementary school (as cited by Schuele & Boudreau,
2008). Based on the literature review above, the researcher proposed the conceptual framework
for this study in section 2.3.
2.3 Conceptual Framework and Hypothesis development
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework
Based on the conceptual framework, this paper suggests that phonological awareness lead to
improvement in reading ability. This framework revealed that phonological awareness program
will improves adult reading ability.
These two variables between phonological awareness and reading ability still not
consensus between among researchers (Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Schuele & Boudreau, 2008; and
Kirby et al., 2012). Morton (2011) stressing that phonological awareness statistically have
significant influences to reading ability by using children as respondents. This finding was line
with the Moats (2000) and Gillon (2000). While following by Lesaux and Siegel (2003) found
that reading ability and phonological awareness no significant relationship between both
variables. In addition, paper by Kirby et al. (2012) showed that phonological awareness have
negative link with reading ability. Thus, inconsistency results from past studies. The following
hypothesis as below:
H1: phonological awareness program will improves adult reading ability in UUM.
Phonological
Awareness Reading ability
IV DV

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3.0 Methodology
The respondents come from UUM students. The totals of respondents were five students from
Master in Applied Linguistic. The students were chosen by using random sampling. Five
respondents were selected for this interview with their ages ranging between 24 to 42 years and
they came from different countries. They were given the same text that retrieved from Favourite
Stories Burma title “The Three Scholars and the Fool”. Later on, they were asking to read it and
the researcher recorded the time taken to read.
This study conducted using experimental method which involved three steps. The first
steps are pre-test where the researcher recorded time taken to read the written text by the
respondents. The following steps are the intervention where the respondent was given two weeks
of phonology classes. During intervention period, importance was given to international
phonetics alphabets (IPA). IPA are currently widely accepted and used methodology of teaching
the sounds produced by the individual alphabets. The intervention was conducted over a period
of two weeks to observe the success of teaching methodology. The third steps were post-test
where recording of time taken to read the same written text.
4.0 Discussion and finding
4.1 Result Pre-Test
Table 1 shows that the respondent coded 1PFCC took 4:39 minutes to read the written text. She
read the text easily but her pronunciation was not too clear. Next, the respondent coded
2PMINM took 3:18 minutes to finish the reading. He read the text confidently and clearly with
good use of intonation. The time taken to read recorded for respondent 3PFMM was 3:10
minutes. The researcher found that she read the given text fast but clear with the good use of
intonation. The respondent coded 4PFII took 5:05 minutes to read the text. She read it slowly and

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she had problem to pronounce some words and also she did not use intonation. Finally, the time
taken for the respondent coded as 5PMII was 5:58 minutes. The researcher observed that he read
very slowly, his pronunciation also bad and also he did not used intonation.
Table 1: Data collection for pre-test
No. Respondent Time taken to read texts Observation
1 1PFCC 4:39
Read easily but pronunciation is not
really clear.
2 2PMINM 3:18
Read confidently and clearly with
good use of intonation.
3 3PFMM 3:10
Read fast but clear and good use
of intonation.
4 4PFII 5:05
Reads slowly, had trouble with
some words and no intonation.
5 5PMII 5:58
Reads very slowly, bad pronunciation
and no intonation.
4.2 Result Post-Test
After two weeks of intervention period, the researcher found that there were some changes occur
in post-test step. The table 2 below shows the changes that happened after intervention step.
Moreover, this table indicates that the respondent coded 1PFCC took 4:20 minutes to read the
written text. She read the text easily but her pronunciation was not too clear. Next, the
respondent coded 2PMINM took 3:00 minutes to finish the reading. He read the text confidently
and clearly with good use of intonation. The time taken to read recorded for respondent 3PFMM
was 2:59 minutes. The researcher found that she read the given text fast but clear with the good
use of intonation. The respondent coded 4PFII took 5:00 minutes to read the text. She read it
slowly and she had problem to pronounce some words and also she did not use intonation.
Finally, the time taken for the respondent coded as 5PMII was 5:45 minutes. The researcher
observed that he read very slowly, his pronunciation also bad and also he did not used intonation

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Table 2: Data collection for post-test
No. Respondent Time taken to read texts Observation
1 1PFCC 4:20
Read easily but pronunciation is not
really clear.
2 2PMINM 3:00
Read confidently and clearly with
good use of intonation.
3 3PFMM 2:59
Read fast but clear and good use
of intonation.
4 4PFII 5:00
Reads slowly, had trouble with
some words and no intonation.
5 5PMII 5:45
Reads very slowly, bad pronunciation
and no intonation.
4.3 The Relationship Phonological Awareness and Reading Ability
After the post-test was done, the researcher found that all the respondents were
successfully improved their time taken to read the written text. The table 3 below shows the
analysis of the improvement using quantitative method. According to the quantitative data
analysis conducted for this small-scaled study, it was noticed that respondent coded as 1PFCC
improved her reading time by 4.32 percent. This is shown by the time taken to read the article
during the pre-test and post-test. The time taken to read during the pre-test was 4:39 minutes
while for the post-test, she took lesser time to read which was recorded at 4:20 minutes. Next, the
respondent coded as 2PMINM improved his reading time by 5.66 percent. This is shown by the
time taken to read the article during the pre-test and post-test. The time taken to read during the
pre-test was 3:18 minutes while for the post-test, he took lesser time to read which was recorded
at 3:00 minutes.
The third respondent coded as 3PFMM improved her reading time by 16.45 percent. This
is shown by the time taken to read the article during the pre-test and post-test. The time taken to
read during the pre-test was 3:10 minutes while for the post-test, she took lesser time to read
which was recorded at 2:59 minutes. Next, the fourth respondent coded as 4PFII improved her

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reading time by 0.99 percent. This is shown by the time taken to read the article during the pre-
test and post-test. The time taken to read during the pre-test was 5:05 minutes while for the post-
test, she took lesser time to read which was recorded at 5:00 minutes. Another respondent coded
as 5PMII improved his reading time by 2.32 percent. This is shown by the time taken to read the
article during the pre-test and post-test. The time taken to read during the pre-test was 5:58
minutes while for the post-test, he took lesser time to read which was recorded at 5:45 minutes.
Table 3: Data Analysis of Phonological Awareness and Reading Ability
No. Respondent Pre-Test
Post-
Test
Differences in Time
Taken (minutes) Differences in Percentage (%)
1 1PFCC 4:39 4:20 0.19 4.32
2 2PMINM 3:18 3:00 0.18 5.66
3 3PFMM 3:10 2:59 0.51 16.45
4 4PFII 5:05 5:00 0.05 0.99
5 5PMII 5:58 5:45 0.13 2.32
As a conclusion, after the pre-test and post-test step was assessed the researcher found
that the intervention class for the respondents was successful to improve their time taken to read
the given text. This finding was supported by previous study by Moats (2000) and Gillon (2000).
The results of this investigation indicated that an explicit phonological awareness program can
significantly improve the reading accuracy and reading comprehension skills of children with
language impairments (Gillon, 2000). The reason behind this is the respondents realize that
ability to read play as predominant role to ensure that they able to success in their life.
Furthermore, it will lead jeopardize and give advantage if they cannot perform well in reading
skill, particularly in educational learning. Thus, hypothesis H1 was accepted.

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5.0 Conclusion
The summary of this study has been proven phonological awareness as crucial part to lead
reading ability in UUM master students. This paper might be contributed UUM language center
by adding new seminar or program to improve the reading ability among their students. This
paper also useful for the government especially Ministry of Education Malaysia through new
syllabus in order to improve reading ability among all level of education (i.e. primary schools
until university student).
For future researcher, this paper also providing some avenue for conducting the research.
For example, the future researcher can add new variable on their research such as writing,
listening, communication and etc. This study has been conducting by using experimental method
so the researcher suggests that for future study to use other method such as exploratory study to
obtain the new result.

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