SYNTHETIC MULTISENSORY APPROACH AND THE READING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT IN PHONEMIC AWARENESS OF PUPILS IN LOWER BASIC SCHOOLS IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Teaching a foreign language is a great challenge for teachers, especially in Nigeria. Many teachers still struggle to teach reading skills and lack knowledge of different approaches to teach reading. The resultant effects are pupils who can’t read or struggle to read, loss of self-esteem, and motivation to learn.

It is against this background that this study investigated the impact of a synthetic multisensory approach on the reading skills development in phonemic awareness of pupils in lower basic schools. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. A total of 476 pupils and 20 teachers were involved in the study using multistage sampling procedure. The study examined the main effect of treatment, and school type on the lower basic pupils' reading skills development in phonemic awareness. This instrument -Phonemic Awareness test (PAT), was used to collect data. Data were analysed for research questions using frequency count, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and t-test. While the hypotheses formulated were analysed quantitatively using Analysis of Covariance and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings revealed that SMA-JPRB enhanced the reading skills development of pupils in phonemic awareness. The study recommends the integration of SMA into the teaching of English Studies in lower basic schools.

KEYWORDS: synthetic multisensory approach, phonemic awareness.