using textual enhancement in teaching phonics and reading simple words to young learners

Learning new sounds and letters in second language (l2) specially in languages which do not share similar sound and orthographic system with learners' first language (l1) may be a challenging work for l2 learners especially for young learners. when it comes to blending the sounds or reading long vowel sounds it may become even more complicated. textual enhancement is one of the technique which recently have been used widely to improve learners' learning performance in different aspects of language. the present study reports on a project using textual enhancement in teaching blending the sounds and reading long vowels to iranian young learners and its effect on improving their reading ability. moreover, we were interested in students' attitude toward textual enhancement in teaching reading. the data were compiled from two english classes comprising 33 female iranian students with and age range of 8 to 10, 16 in experimental and 17 in control group. before applying the treatment, all the students were asked to read 25 words containing the target structure in order to make sure that none of them have the knowledge of blending or reading the words. long vowels and the last two letters of the three-letter words were enhanced via changing color of the letters, increasing the font, bolding and underling. this treatment lasted for 15 sessions. after the treatment all the students in experimental and control group were asked to read 25 words. t-test were used to compare the performance of both groups. the results revealed that the learners in experimental group outperformed the learners in control group. the qualitative data got from the interview of 12 students in experimental group showed that overly they have positive attitude toward textual enhancement. they found it an interesting technique which make the learning joyful and also it decreases their stress in reading the new words.