Effects of phonics instruction on improving the decoding and word reading skills of first-grade English as foreign language students in Ethiopia
Abstract
Decoding and word-reading skills are foundational for children in English as foreign language environments with limited exposure to the language. Despite the very low reading achievement of students in this area, instructions in Ethiopia primarily rely on whole-word reading rather than grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills to recognize the meaning behind written words. Several studies have investigated the word-reading skills of EFL students using implicit instructional methods; however, studies on the effect of explicit phonics on decoding and word-reading are limited. Thus, the current study aimed to examine whether explicit phonics instruction improves the decoding and word-reading skills of EFL students in Sekota Primary School, Ethiopia. Two grade 1 EFL classes were randomly selected as experimental (N = 28) and control (N = 32) groups. Intervention based on explicit decoding and word reading was conducted for the experimental group for 20–25 minutes each school day over twelve weeks. Test results were measured based on participant pretest and posttest scores, and they were analyzed using a t-test. Results revealed that explicit phonics significantly improved the word-reading skills of the experimental group compared to the control group. Accordingly, this study suggests the necessity of emphasizing phonics to improve the word reading skills of EFL.
References
Copyright (c) 2025 Ayalew Adane Salilew, Dawit Amogne Assegidew, Yenus Nurie

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).