Strong Linkage between Education Research and Practice

“Reforming How Reading Is Taught: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Systematic Phonics Instruction for Low-SES Early Readers.”

To remember phonics rules, we provided English teachers with adapted popular songs for use in classrooms. The songs were carefully selected from many contemporary Chinese popular songs based on the teachers' and students' familiarity with the songs and their strong sense of rhythm to maximize efficient memory. The lyrics were replaced with phonics rules that were easily memorizable.

“Does Phonics Instruction Change Students’ English Learning Attitudes? Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Systematic Phonics Instruction for English Language Learners.”

We conducted live online training sessions for the teachers in EXPERIMENT 1  to learn phonics knowledge in October and November 2020.

We have collected more than 10,000 student surveys with rich data, including student demographics, SES, and learning beliefs. We aim to establish a rich dataset for low-income student learning and use the data to find teaching and learning strategies to optimize their learning outcomes.

We conducted live online training sessions for the teachers in EXPERIMENT 2  to learn phonics knowledge in October and November 2021.

We are employing Natural Language Processing for detecting teacher practices and student learning using texts and for improving teaching quality and learning outcomes.

We conducted a series of in-person teacher training events for treatment teachers to enhance their phonics skills, communicate phonics applications in English classrooms, and collaborate on class planning.

This working paper is the first paper presenting the findings of comparing the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction and International Phonetic Alphabet instruction using experimental methodology.

The treatment teachers in our experiment gradually develop the habit of teaching and using systematic phonics instruction in their English classes.