The Attitudes of the Jordanian EFL Teachers toward Employing the Phonological Awareness Skills in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

No one denies the importance of being phonologically aware. A large body of research confirmed the key role of phonological awareness to enhance students' abilities to able to decode automatically and accurately. However, this study was conducted to investigate the Jordanian EFL teachers' attitudes toward integrating their EFL classrooms the main levels of phonological awareness and that was considered the question of the study. Practically, and in order to answer the question study, a qualitative research method through a research tool was employed. Therefore, a well-prepared questionnaire was run. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were both taken into consideration. The sample study consisted of (200) participants distributed in different municipalities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, especially in Zarqa municipality. The findings of the study were not satisfactory and revealed dearth in competence among teachers, besides, most of EFL teachers detracted from the importance of phonological awareness to create a generation of students who are able to read rapidly and accurately. The results also showed clear gap in phonological awareness among the EFL teachers in the practical side. Consequently, the researcher recommended other researchers to shed light more on the teachers' capacities and their awareness to practically employ phonological awareness and its subtasks; segmentation, blending manipulation and other phonological types explicitly. Besides, the researcher recommended also EFL teachers to keep up to date revolutionary researches related to instruction methods.