Effects of an explicit rime-based phonics method on the phonological awareness outcomes of Ethiopian EFL children

The present study aimed to assess whether a training-based intervention using an explicit rime-based phonics method improves the phonological awareness outcomes of EFL children in Ethiopia. The participants were two sections of 3rd grade children (N = 70) from two public primary schools in Hawassa, Ethiopia. A quasi-experimental research design was used in which a section of the children (N = 35) were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the other section of the children (N = 35) to the control group. The experimental group was explicitly exposed to a training-based beginning reading intervention using an explicit rime-based phonics method. The control group stayed in their regular classroom with their regular beginning reading lessons with the conventional way. The phonological awareness test (PAT) was used to measure phonological awareness outcomes in the two groups before and after the intervention. The findings showed that the experimental group achieved significant improvement on the phonological awareness at post- test and that the magnitude of the intervention’s effect was very large for all sub-subtests and the total phonological awareness. The findings also indicated that brief and direct beginning reading instruction with an explicit rime-based phonics method helps children in a non-English language context with a first language (L1) significantly different from English to rapidly improve their phonological awareness performances. The findings further suggested that just knowledge of letters alone is not a sufficient condition for phonological awareness to develop.