Journal of Education and Human Development

“Learning Phonics by Young ESL Learners – Leapfrog Cartoon Vs Teacher-Centered Teaching”
Ms Gevani Prahalathan

Abstract
Since it is very hard to learn the phonic sounds of the alphabetic letters for a second language learner, and as a kid, which is essential for their learning skill in English, this research may be helpful to compare an easier and a quicker way to acquire the sounds. In Sri Lanka, the teaching process is predominantly teacher-centered and at times it is done through educational videos. This research shows how effective and interesting the cartoons are in helping to learn phonics with ease in a very short term. This is a research conducted to compare how quick and effective the learning process is through the Leapfrog cartoon than teacher-centered teaching. The sample student groups are from a kindergarten school in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 8 students were taken for the research, the age ranged from 2-3. The students were divided into two groups, four in each. The duration of the study was for 10 sessions with one and a half houreach. In each session, Group A was taught phonics by their teacher through chalk and board system, posters etc. other than videos. Group B was taught only through leapfrog cartoon. Limitations were, teaching alphabet phonics was conducted once a week twice at each session, and was taught in the morning just after their prayers so that the kids will be fresh and ready to learn and not distracted. The performance of the two student groups was evaluated using CBM: Curriculum-based measure is a norm-based tool for measuring an aspect of literacy, CBM-LSF: Curriculumbased measure for collecting data on a student’s ability to match a letter to its sound given to them at the end of each session. The results were used to determine whether the intervention, the use of the Leapfrog cartoon, is effective in improving the learning of phonics. The classroom observations indicated that the students in Group B were more motivated and interact more in the class than the other group.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v4n4a24