GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

                                                                                                   ABSTRACT

The research determined the effect of rhyming, sound deletion, phoneme substitution and look and say instructional strategies on spelling and reading performance of male and female primary school pupils in Akwa Ibom North East Senatorial District. Two specific objectives, two research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted the pretest, post-test, control group non-randomized quasi-experimental research design. The population of the study comprised of 11,180 primary two pupils consisting of 5,361 male and 5,819 female from public primary schools and a sample size of 120 respondents. Two instruments titled Pupils Spelling Performance Test (PSPT) and Pupils Reading Performance Test (PRPT) were used for data collection. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to determine the reliability of the instruments, which presented values of 0.83 and 0.87 for PSPT and PRPT respectively. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result shows that when taught using rhyming, female pupils had a mean value of 14.56 as against 11.47 for male pupils. when taught with sound deletion, the mean value for female pupils increased to 30.31 while the males had a mean value of 19.69. The mean value for female pupils in phoneme substitution was 25.84 and 13.5 for males; however, the mean value for female pupils in look and say was 15.36 as against 11.35 for male pupils. This result shows that female pupils performed better in spelling than male pupils. Hypothesis one also showed there is no significant mean difference in male and female pupils’ spelling performance when taught using Rhyming, sound deletion and Phoneme substitution and Look and Say Instructional strategies. The result shows, when the scores of male and female students are considered for all the teaching methods, the probability value is .280. At p<.05.280, Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that teachers should use sound deletion when teaching spelling in classrooms. The school administrators should consider in-service training for English teachers in phonological instructional strategies.

KEYWORDS: Spelling, Reading, Rhyming, Sound deletion, phoneme substitution, look and say instructional strategies.