Give 1000 Rural Children an English Education

Dear Givers,

Phonics empowers rural Chinese students by helping to place them on a more equal footing with their urban counterparts, while also equipping them with skills that can support future success. It is important to recognise the persistent education gap between rural and urban areas in China. Urban students often benefit from higher-quality teachers, stronger academic programmes, and broader access to educational resources. In addition, rural Chinese families frequently face lower incomes and heavier economic burdens. In some rural areas, dropout rates have reportedly reached 40%. Against this backdrop, phonics and English instruction offer students transferable, lifelong skills that can improve opportunity and help break cycles of disadvantage and poverty.

 The I Love Learning Education Centre in Liaoning, China, has been using phonics to build literacy skills among rural Chinese students. The core focus of the programme is to teach students the relationship between letters and sounds, with particular emphasis on decoding for reading and encoding for writing.

When teaching newcomer rural Chinese students, experts at the school begin with CVC words in the following way:

1. Introduce the letters s, a, t, n, i, p.

2. Teach the corresponding sound for each letter. For example, s represents the sound /s/.

3. Once students are familiar with the letters and sounds, they are ready to begin decoding. Teachers then use a CVC word flip chart to practise decoding. For example:

Decoding

Step 1

Teacher and Students: “s is /s/, a is /æ/, t is /t/.”

Step 2

Teacher and Students: “/s/ /æ/ /t/”

Step 3

Teacher and Students: “/sæt/”

Step 4 

Flip the letters on the Flip Chart and have the class, groups, or individuals repeat the above cycle with the teacher gradually reducing the level of scaffolding.

In this way, students learn to move from recognising individual letter sounds to blending them together to read words accurately and confidently. This method helps build a strong foundation in early literacy and gives students the confidence to begin reading independently.

We are deeply thankful for your support, because without it, implementing such a life-changing phonics programme would not be possible. Your contributions help us recruit quality teachers and design and deliver an effective phonics programme for the children of rural China.

Links:

• Analyzing the Education Gap Between Rural and Urban Environments