Synthetic Phonics in Italian Bilingual Schools: Teachers' Views and Pronunciation

The use of synthetic phonics to teach literacy in Anglophone contexts is ever present in public discourse about primary education, and is sometimes controversial. Less is known about its use(s) in EFL and bilingual education contexts. This paper shares data from a small study of teachers in Italian primary schools where synthetic phonics has been used in a bilingual programme for over five years. A questionnaire was sent to 15 teachers who teach in state bilingual primary schools in the Lombardy region in Northern Italy. The schools are part of the Bilingual Education in Italy (BEI) project. The questionnaire asked about the teachers’ perceptions of synthetic phonics before and after using it. In particular, it asked about the impact of using synthetic phonics on both students’ and teachers’ pronunciation. Like studies in China and Spain, research in this project reveals that teachers using synthetic phonics in EFL contexts find it a useful tool not just for teaching literacy, but for helping raise children’s FL phonological awareness and focus on their own pronunciation.