Teaching Phonics to Italian EFL Students: The Results of a Pilot Project with Italian Schoolchildren

In Italy English is taught since kindergarten and elementary school following a communicative whole language approach, which does not provide any direct and systematic teaching of the complex phonemic and phonological aspects of the English language and of its sound-letter correspondences. As a consequence, young Italian pupils do not develop the ability to read and write in English during the first stages of second language learning, nor do they learn to pronounce En glish words correctly, since they often transfer Italian phonemes to English. In order to enhance an earlier and quicker acquisition of literacy, from 2016 to 2019 we carried out a pilot project on the implementation of a synthetic phonics program in an Italian elementary school from grades 1 to 3. This article describes the project, which was specifically designed to fit the needs of Italian children while working within their traditio nal curriculum, and reports its preliminary results.