Acquisition of Phonological Decoding Skills and Recognition of Environmental Print by Elementary School Students Learning English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

The aim of this study is (1) to clarify how Japanese elementary school students acquire phonological decoding skills, progressing from a stage where they can only recognize environmental print to a stage where they can utilize letter knowledge, and (2) to examine how they recognize environmental print from the perspectives of holistic visual, analytic visual, and analytic letter recognition. Three tasks were administered to students in grades 1–6 at a private school: a logo decoding task, a textualized logo decoding task, and a consonant-substituted logo decoding task. Analysis of answer patterns across the tasks revealed that students initially relied on decorative cues but, with instruction in letter knowledge and grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules, gradually developed phonological decoding skills based on letter knowledge. Instruction also facilitated analytic letter recognition of environmental print, which may, in turn, contribute to the acquisition of phonological decoding skills.