Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 2 (2013) 216–221
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Using mnemonic images and explicit sound contrasting to help Japanese children learn English alphabet sounds Emmanuel Manalo a,∗ , Yuri Uesaka b , Koki Sekitani b a b
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 May 2013 Received in revised form 14 September 2013 Accepted 18 September 2013 Available online 25 September 2013 Keywords: Mnemonic strategy Explicit sound contrasting Alphabet letter-sound learning Japanese children English reading instruction Phonemes and morae
a b s t r a c t Although mnemonics have been shown to be effective in remembering letter-sound associations, the use of foreign words as cues for English phonemes had not been investigated. Learning phonemes in Japan is challenging because the Japanese language is based on a different sound unit called mora (mostly consonant-vowel combinations). This study investigated the effectiveness of using mnemonic images utilizing Japanese words as cues for the phonemes, and explicit sound contrasting of phonemic sounds with morae they could be confused with, in facilitating children’s acquisition of knowledge about alphabet letter-sound correspondence. The participants were 140 6th-grade Japanese students who were taught phoneme-consonant correspondence, with or without the use of mnemonics or explicit sound contrasting. Analysis of the students’ pre- and post-instruction assessments revealed significant interaction effects between types of instruction provided and instruction phase, indicating better performance in letter-sound association as a consequence of the inclusion of both mnemonics and explicit sound contrasting. © 2013 Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction To develop reading skills in English, children need to learn and remember the sounds that letters make (e.g., Liberman, 1973; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Treiman, 2000; Treiman, Tincoff, Rodriguez, Mouzaki, & Francis, 1998). This requires children to master the alphabetic principle, which in simple terms means being able to understand the correspondence between the letters in written words and the sounds that make up spoken words. The acquisition of the alphabetic principle is complex and requires the development of at least two skills: phonological awareness and knowledge about letters (e.g., Adams, 1990; Treiman, 2000). Phonological awareness pertains to the ability to perceive the sounds that make up spoken language (Stahl & Murray, 1994). Knowledge about letters, on the other hand, pertains to knowing letter names and the sounds they make (Treiman, 2000). 1.1. Why learning to read in English is particularly difficult for some children whose first language is not English The development of phonological awareness and knowledge about letters is difficult for most children (e.g., Gough & Hillinger,
∗ Corresponding author at: Center for English Language Education, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Bldg 51 Rm 05-9B, 3-4-1 Ohkubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan. Tel.: +81 90 6672 2075. E-mail address:
[email protected] (E. Manalo).
1980). There are immense challenges that children must face when they grapple with the numerous overlapping stages involved in the reading acquisition process. However, even greater challenges are faced by children whose first language is not English – especially children whose first language does not share the same syllabic sounds and alphabetic writing system as those used in English. To begin with, until such time that they master the sound structure used in English, those children have to rely on sound structures inherent in their first language to process phonological information in English – and such reliance can be fraught with problems particularly in relation to accuracy (cf. Cutler, Mehler, Norris, & Segui, 1992; Cutler & Otake, 1994; Goto, 1971; Werker & Tees, 1984). In Japan, phonemes are difficult for children to conceptualize and learn because the Japanese language is based on a different sound unit called mora (Cutler & Otake, 1994; McQueen, Otake, & Cutler, 2001; Vance, 1987). Cutler and Otake (1994, p. 826) described a mora as a “subsyllabic unit which can be a vocalic nucleus (V), a nucleus plus syllabic onset (CV or CCV), or a consonant, usually a nasal consonant (N), in syllabic coda position”. The majority of morae, however, are of the CV combination. For example, the Japanese word “yama” (which means mountain) comprises two morae: “ya” and “ma”. This difference in sound structures contributes to Japanese children often mistaking English alphabet letters as corresponding to moraic sounds. For example, many children erroneously think that the letter m has the sound of “mu”. Previous research has described some of the difficulties that this difference in language sound structure causes, including poorer
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E. Manalo et al. / Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 2 (2013) 216–221
accuracy and speed in target sound detection (Cutler & Otake, 1994), and problems in detecting words with structures that are misaligned with mora boundaries (McQueen et al., 2001). Knowledge about letters, the other skill that is crucial to mastering the alphabetic principle (Adams, 1990; Treiman, 2000), is likewise challenging as there are many potential barriers to its acquisition (e.g., the associations between letters and their corresponding sounds are arbitrary; Ehri, Deffner, & Wilce, 1984). Children whose first language is not English, however, usually need to first learn the writing system of their native language. Japanese children, for example, need to master not one writing system, but two: kanji and kana (Iwata, 1984). Most Japanese children must deal with the challenges of learning the English letters after they have already begun learning the two Japanese writing systems. Therefore, they face not only potential problems in retention with greater amounts of information to learn, but also confusion within and between the different script systems to be learnt. 1.2. How the use of mnemonic images and explicit sound contrasting might help Mnemonics have been shown in previous studies to be helpful in facilitating the retention of the connections between the script of a language and their corresponding readings or sounds (Ehri et al., 1984; Gruneberg & Sykes, 1996; Lu, Webb, Krus, & Fox, 1999; Manalo, 2002; Manalo, Mizutani, & Trafford, 2004). Mnemonic images, for example, can provide memorable associations between letters and objects that begin with those letters so that the objects later serve as cues for the letter sounds. A common example is the connection that is made in many alphabet wall charts between letters and representative objects such as the letter a and “apple” (see Fig. 1A). Research has further shown that, for the mnemonic association to be effective, the letter and the associated object image need to be integrated: This means that the mnemonic association needs to effectively link the visual stimulus (e.g., the letter m) to the required response (e.g., remembering “mountain”, see Fig. 1B) so that the stimulus itself serves as a reminder of that response (Coleman & Morris, 1978; Ehri et al., 1984). Such linking is not facilitated in disassociated mnemonic images (see example shown in Fig. 1C). In countries like Japan, where English education is increasingly becoming more important, alphabet wall charts that include mnemonic images are also commonly displayed in classrooms. However, apart from the frequent use of disassociated mnemonic images (which is also a common problem in English speaking countries), there is an additional problem that such charts present: The corresponding words in Japanese for the mnemonic images shown are different. In Japanese, for example, mountain is “yama”, so a child who has not yet learnt the English word “mountain” could easily end up mistaking the/y/sound for the letter m. For such charts to be effective in promoting learning of the sounds that letters make, the images portrayed must serve as reminders of the correct sounds to be associated with the respective letters. Thus, the words that children might use to describe those images must begin with the correct sounds that correspond to the letters. For children who are unlikely to know sufficient words in English, it would be more appropriate to use words drawn from their native language as they are likely to use those words to describe the images portrayed. Examples of how this could be done in Japanese are shown in Fig. 1D and E, where the letter m is associated with “mayu” (the Japanese word for eyebrow) and the letter p with “puragu” (the Japanese word for power plug). While the above approach would provide a means for linking the shape of the letters to images that could serve as reminders for the sounds that the letters make, it still leaves the potential problem of Japanese children associating alphabet letters with inaccurate
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syllabic sounds (e.g., “mu” for the letter m) instead of the correct phonemes. To overcome this problem, explicit sound contrasting is one strategy that could be used. In using such an approach, children’s attention would be drawn to the differences between specific phonemes that target letters make, and the potential morae or syllabic sounds that they could be confused with. Explicit sound contrasting had previously been used with some success, particularly in training Japanese adults on the differences between the sounds that the letters r and l make (see, e.g., review by Bradlow, 2008). 1.3. Overview of the present study The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of mnemonic images and explicit sound contrasting would effectively facilitate Japanese elementary school children’s acquisition of knowledge about alphabet letter-sound correspondence. Thus, the hypotheses to be tested were: (1) Participants who receive instruction with the use of mnemonic images would subsequently be more successful in identifying the correct letters corresponding to different phonemic sounds, compared to participants who do not. (2) Participants who receive instruction with the use of explicit sound contrasting would subsequently be more successful in identifying the correct letters corresponding to different phonemic sounds, compared to participants who do not. Determining the effectiveness of each of these forms of instructional intervention is useful as they could potentially contribute to the development of more efficacious methods for teaching English reading skills, not only to Japanese school children, but also to other children in countries where English is not the native language. The development of such methods is important in the increasingly globalized education environment where English has taken a prominent and essentially indispensable role (cf. Rubdy & Saraceni, 2006). 2. Method 2.1. Participants The participants were 140 6th-grade children (11–12 year olds) in four equivalent classes in one public elementary school in the Kanto area of Japan (which includes Tokyo). The participants had had very limited English language instruction. Their English vocabulary knowledge, grammatical understanding, and speaking and reading skills would have been extremely limited – as would be usual for most Japanese school children in the same grade. To provide a context for children’s English language competence in Japan: It was only from the school year beginning April 2011 that the Japanese Ministry of Education made it compulsory for schools to provide one lesson per week in foreign language activities (usually English, but other languages are also possible) to 5th- and 6th-grade students. In classes below the 5th-grade, schools are not required to provide such lessons, and many do not. Prior to April 2011, elementary schools were not required to provide such lessons at all, and many did not – or if they did, lessons provided were limited to singing and games in which the English language was used. The necessary school and parental permissions for the children’s participation in this study were obtained. 2.2. Materials and procedure A 2 × 2 experimental design (with/without mnemonic images × with/without explicit sound contrasting) was used,
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Fig. 1. Mnemonic images to assist in the retention of alphabet letter-sound correspondence. (A) Common association between the letter a and apple found in many alphabet wall charts. (B) Integrated image for the letter m and mountain. (C) Disassociated image for the letter m and mountain. (D) Integrated image for the letter m and “mayu” (eyebrow). (E) Integrated image for the letter p and “puragu” (power plug).
with both factors as between subject variables. The participants were provided two 45-min class sessions (one week apart) during which they were taught the phonemes associated with 12 consonant letters of the English alphabet. The 12 consonants used were: b, c, f, g, h, m, p, r, s, t, v, and w. Decisions about which consonants to use were influenced by a number of practical considerations, including the existence or otherwise of common, concrete words in Japanese starting with the phonemes associated with the consonant letters. Vowels were not used because of the greater variation that exists in the phonemes they represent. In cases where more than one phoneme is associated with the consonant (i.e., c and g), only one of phoneme was taught to the children to avoid potential confusion: for g the phoneme/g/(rather than/j/) was used, and for c the phoneme/k/(instead of/s/) was used. Integrated mnemonic images, similar to those shown in Fig. 1D and E, were created for each of the 12 consonants to link the lower case appearance of these letters (e.g., how the lower case letter m looks like) to visual representations of the corresponding Japanese words used as cues (e.g., how “mayu” or eyebrows could look like). To minimize disruptions to the children’s regular class conduct and schedule, the four classes that the children belonged to were randomly assigned one of four conditions that determined the kind of consonant-phoneme instructions they were to be provided: (i) with the use of mnemonic images, (ii) with the use of explicit sound contrasting, (iii) with the use of both mnemonic
images and explicit sound contrasting, and (iv) without the use of either of these strategies (note that the children assigned to this group were also provided with instruction in letter-sound correspondence – only without the use of mnemonic images or explicit sound contrasting). Instructions could therefore be provided during the children’s regular classes. However, even though the classes were supposed to be equivalent in regard to distribution of children according to their academic aptitudes (i.e., they were not ability streamed classes), it was deemed inappropriate to make direct comparisons between these class groups/conditions – for reasons including lack of adequate control over the children’s amount of English reading experience and knowledge prior to the experiment. Thus, subsequent analysis of the data gathered was conducted according to the 2 × 2 experimental design used, focusing on whether a participant received instructions with or without the additional strategies, rather than the class he or she was taught in. Pre- and post-instruction assessments of the children’s letter-sound correspondence knowledge were conducted. The preinstruction assessment was carried out in the morning prior to the first instruction session (which was held in the afternoon). The post-instruction assessment was undertaken in the class period following the second instruction session. During these assessments, a video recording of the third author uttering, in a randomized sequence, the phonemes corresponding to the 12 consonants was played. The video recording was used to ensure consistency in
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Table 1 Participants’ mean pre- and post-instruction scores (with standard deviations in brackets) according to whether they received instruction with or without mnemonic images and sound contrasting. Mnemonic images
With Without
Sound contrasting With Pre-instruction
With Post-instruction
Without Pre-instruction
Without Post-instruction
3.81 (2.76) 4.69 (2.37)
7.48 (2.71) 7.17 (2.72)
3.76 (3.12) 3.78 (2.73)
6.38 (4.09) 5.35 (3.73)
the way the phonemes were uttered across groups and assessments. For each phoneme, the children were asked to select (by circling) the corresponding consonant letter on a sheet of paper they were provided, on which the 12 letters were printed in lower case form in a scattered, random order. A separate sheet was provided for each phoneme uttered. As noted earlier, in Japan, although most children in elementary school are familiar with the appearance and names of English alphabet letters, they lack proficiency in recognizing and producing the appropriate phonemes that correspond to each letter. Even at the grade 6 level, as evidenced in the pre-instruction scores of the children depicted in Table 1 (the scores shown were out of a maximum possible score of 12), on average they get well below 50% correct in such associations. During the instruction sessions, the second author took the role of teacher and first explained to the children how English alphabet letters have corresponding sounds, and those sounds are combined to produce words that the letters spell. She then introduced each of the consonants, showing the letter written in lower case on an A3 size card, reminding the children of the letter’s name, and then teaching them the phoneme sound that the consonant makes. She asked the children to practice saying the phonemes as they were introduced, and provided examples of words in which the letter and corresponding phoneme are used. The above therefore comprised the instruction provided without the use of either mnemonic images or explicit sound contrasting. In the classes in which the mnemonic images were used, the images were introduced to the children after they had been given each letter and corresponding phoneme. The second author told the children, for example, that a good way to remember the sound that the letter p makes is to imagine that it looks like a “puragu” (power plug), as depicted in the illustration she then showed them. She told the children that “puragu” starts with the/p/sound that the letter p makes. She advised them that to remember the/p/sound of the letter p, the appearance of the letter looking like a “puragu” could serve as a reminder. In the classes that included explicit sound contrasting, the second author additionally explained to the children that the English phoneme sounds are different from the usual sounds used in Japanese words and written script. For each letter and corresponding phoneme, she provided explicit examples, such as that the/p/sound of the letter p is different from “pu”, “pa”, “pi”, “pe”, and “po”. The second instruction session covered essentially the same points as in the first instruction session, except new examples were used where appropriate. The second session was provided to review and remind the children of what they were supposed to have learned during the first session. It should be noted that delivery of all instruction sessions took the same amount of time, fitting into the school’s regular 45-min class session. In other words, the sessions in which mnemonic images and/or explicit sound contrasting were included took no more time than the sessions without use of these strategies. Time use during the sessions was carefully managed by adjusting the number of, and length of time spent on, examples and practice exercises.
3. Results A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA (“with and without explicit sound contrasting” × “with and without mnemonic use” × “phase: pre- and post-instruction”) was carried out on the number of correct responses that the participants made in the assessments of their letter-sound correspondence knowledge. The analysis revealed significant main effects for explicit sound contrasting (F(1, 136) = 4.03, p = .047, 2p = .029) and for phase (F(1, 136) = 155.61, p < .001, 2p = .534), but the main effect due to mnemonic use was not significant (F(1, 136) = .050, p = .823, 2p = .001). Significant interaction effects were further found between explicit sound contrasting and phase (F(1, 136) = 5.66, p = .019, 2p = .040), and between mnemonic use and phase (F(1, 136) = 7.32, p = .008, 2p = .051). However, the three-way interaction between explicit sound contrasting, mnemonic use, and phase was not significant (F(1, 136) = .028, p = .869, 2p = .001). The mean number of correct responses that the participants made according to whether they were provided explicit sound contrasting and/or mnemonic images during the instructions provided are shown in Table 1. The significant main effect due to explicit sound contrasting indicates that in general the participants in the condition with explicit sound contrasting produced more correct responses compared to those in the condition without explicit sound contrasting. The main effect of phase indicates that the participants produced more correct responses at post-instruction stage compared to the pre-instruction stage. In order to more clearly understand these differences, a simple effects analysis was undertaken on the interaction between explicit sound contrasting and phase. This analysis revealed that the difference in scores between pre- and post-instruction was significant for both the conditions with and without explicit sound contrasting: for the condition without, F(1, 136) = 50.96, p < .001, 2p = .273; for the condition with explicit sound contrasting, F(1, 136) = 110.31, p < .001, 2p = .448. The significant interaction effect, however, indicates that the improvement in scores from pre- to post-instruction was greater for the participants who received explicit sound contrasting instruction than for those who did not. The comparative magnitude of the effect sizes indicates this difference. A simple effects analysis was also conducted on the interaction between mnemonic use and phase. This analysis revealed that the difference in scores between pre- and post-instruction was again significant for both the conditions with and without mnemonic use: for the condition without, F(1, 136) = 47.71, p < .001, 2p = .260; for the condition with mnemonic use, F(1, 136) = 115.22, p < .001, 2p = .459. The significant interaction effect, however, indicates that the improvement in scores from pre- to post-instruction was greater for the participants who received mnemonic use instruction than for those who did not. Again, the comparative magnitude of the effect sizes is indicative of this difference. Thus, these findings indicate that, although the children were making improvements in their abilities to identify the correct letters corresponding to different phonemic sounds following the basic instructions provided (as perhaps would be expected), the improvements were more pronounced when explicit sound
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contrasting and mnemonic images were included in the instructions provided. 4. Discussion 4.1. Why explicit sound contrasting helps As explained earlier, the Japanese and English languages are based on different sound units (Cutler & Otake, 1994; McQueen et al., 2001; Vance, 1987). Hence, generally speaking, it is difficult for Japanese children to think in terms of the phonemes that alphabet letters represent. Even after learning what to call and how to write those letters, most Japanese children might erroneously think that those letters represent syllabic sounds. It is therefore necessary to draw their attention to the specific differences between syllabic and phonemic sounds. One way of teaching Japanese children about alphabet phonemic sounds is to simply introduce and then explain those sounds to them – as would normally happen when they receive regular classroom lessons in English reading. However, as Schwartz and Bransford (1998) pointed out, sometimes simply telling learners the required information is insufficient. They explained that novice learners lack the prior knowledge necessary to establish the intended differentiated knowledge structures for processing the newly provided information. As a consequence, novices may end up thinking that they understand when, in fact, they have missed what is important. To overcome this potential problem among novice learners, Schwartz and Bransford (1998) recommended placement of emphasis on differentiation: in practical terms, this simply means providing novice learners the opportunity to contrast cases so as to draw their attention to crucial details they might otherwise miss – and hence to “develop differentiated knowledge that supports further learning” (p. 479). Where phonemic sound learning is concerned, Japanese elementary school children can clearly be considered as novice learners. Unlike children from other non-English speaking countries like Spain or France, where the native language is based on a phonemic sound system like English, sufficient prior knowledge about phoneme sounds is lacking in Japanese children. Hence, explicit contrasting of cases – as advocated by Schwartz and Bransford in such situations – would likely help them clearly differentiate between phonemic and syllabic sounds: to become aware, for example, of the absence of the vowel sound in the phonemic/m/sound in contrast to “mu” and other/m/-starting syllabic sounds that it could be confused with. 4.2. Why mnemonic images help Mnemonics can work effectively as tools for instruction because they supply the learner with a means for recoding the material to be learned into a more familiar and memorable representation, they relate the material to other information that is already known to the learner, and they provide more reliable cues for later retrieval (Levin, 1983; Manalo, Bunnell, & Stillman, 2000). In the present study, the mnemonic images used recoded the shapes of the letters into more familiar objects, and those objects in turn provided a connection to the sounds that needed to be learned. Because the objects were integrated with the shape of their respective letters, the letters themselves (e.g., p) supplied ready cues for the objects (e.g., “puragu” or power plug) along with the sounds they began with (e.g., /p/). In other words, with the use of the integrated mnemonic images, the associations between the letters to be learned and their corresponding sounds ceased to be arbitrary. The present authors are by no means advocating the wholesale use of mnemonics in school learning, but where there are
challenges to learning that need to be overcome, well-designed mnemonic strategies should certainly be considered (cf. Manalo, 2002; Manalo et al., 2000). For multiple reasons that have already been explained, learning alphabet letter-sound correspondence is difficult for most Japanese children. Hence, at least for beginners, the use of mnemonic images to link the shape of the alphabet letters to objects that in the Japanese language begin with the sounds that those letters make, would likely help – as the results of this study suggest. 4.3. Limitations and future directions Working in a real school setting meant in the current research that random group assignment was not possible and available time to work with the participants was very limited. Thus, among other things, longer-term effects of the instructions provided could not be evaluated. Future research to more carefully examine the effects of the instructional components described here would need to address such limitations where possible. In the present study, the second author provided the instructions to all the groups. Although every possible care was taken to ensure equivalence between the groups in the way those instructions were provided (except, of course, where inclusion or otherwise of the target strategies were concerned), it is nevertheless possible that some biases could have been inadvertently introduced. It would therefore be helpful in future research to confirm the efficacy of the instructional strategies proposed in this research when they are used by teachers with no vested interest in the relative outcomes of the instructions being provided. There are also challenges involved in developing appropriate mnemonic images and associations for some of the letters of the alphabet, especially vowels and consonants that represent more than one phoneme. Therefore, methods for addressing such challenges would also need to be devised and evaluated in future investigations. 4.4. Practical applications Compared to students in most other Asian countries, students in Japan continue to score lower in widely used English language competence assessments (e.g., Butler & Iino, 2005; Silver, Hu, & Iino, 2002). Identifying through research teaching strategies that can produce more successful outcomes in English language learning – such as those described in this study – is therefore much needed. Both strategies are relatively uncomplicated to teach and can simply be used as supplements to standard instructions that teachers may already be using to develop their students’ knowledge and skills about English alphabet letter-sound associations. In practical terms, implementing these strategies in the classroom would require providing teachers with (i) some basic guidance and/or training on the use of the strategies, and (ii) instructional materials they could use when employing the strategies. The guidance or training could be provided in the form of a short booklet with accompanying DVD and/or online demonstrations. The materials for the sound contrasting instruction could include an audio CD that provides correct phonemic sounds associated with the letters of the alphabet, as well as – for contrasting – common syllables and other sounds that could be mistakenly associated with those letters. The materials for the mnemonic imagery instruction could be provided in the form of printed cards depicting integrated mnemonic images of alphabet letters and appropriate Japanese words/images. Finally, it should be noted here that the principles behind the use of mnemonic images and explicit sound contrasting may be helpful, not only in teaching alphabet letter-sound correspondence to Japanese students, but also to students of other nationalities
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