Challenges Faced by Lower Primary School Teachers in Teaching Phonic

This paper investigates the challenges primary school teachers face in teaching
phonics. Phonics Instruction according to the Open University Reading
Development Course Team (1977, p.170) is “any method of teaching which
draws attention to the relationship between phonemes and graphemes”. The
idea of phonemes brings to mind the teaching of sounds while the concept of
graphemes deals with the writing system. Thus, every phonics instruction
guides learners toward mastering reading and writing. Qualitative and
quantitative research approaches were used to understand lower primary school
teachers’ challenges in teaching Phonics. Also, research observation and
questionnaires were used as instruments to collect data through a research
survey. Three lower primary school teachers from Government Primary School
Atuakum Bamenda were selected respondents. The findings reveal that teaching
Phonics to early elementary pupils has been very challenging for lower primary
school teachers as they face many difficulties with the appropriate method. The
results also reveal that only 66.6% of teachers know and understand Phonics,
which prompts us to deeply research and understand the origin of their
challenges in teaching phonics.

Key words:  Phonics, Phonics Teaching.