EFL Prospective Teachers’ Competency in Phonological Awareness: Impact on Teaching English Reading

Deficits in EFL teachers’ proficiency have surfaced recently as one of the possible factors contributing to children’s reading problems at their early encounters with literacy. Phonological awareness (PA) has dominated specialists’ interests well-timed with escalating reports containing more provoking evidence connecting children’s reading disability with deficiencies in PA. This paper aims at investigating the impact of perceived proficiency, GPA, and gender of prospective teachers on shaping their future reading instruction detectable by prospective teachers’ PA beliefs, awareness and knowledge. Towards this end, a four-section survey was administered to 158 pre-service EFL teachers. Results confirmed significant differences related to knowledge and beliefs at the expense of awareness.