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His work spans the fields of learning design, teacher education, technology-enhanced learning and computing education. He is intensely curious about how emerging technologies may be used to enhance learning outcomes and experiences. Dorothy DeWitt is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Technology at the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya. Her interests are in designing learning environments for problem-solving and collaboration, mobile learning and knowledge building. She is constantly probing for new pedagogies and innovative instructional methods.

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A quasi-experimental research design was used to investigate the effectiveness of synthetic phonics in the development of early reading skills among struggling young English as a second language (ESL) readers in a rural school. The pretest and posttest, adapted from the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) for Preschool Students and Grades 1 to 3 tests, assessed children's early reading skills. A semi-structured interview was used to gather information. The findings indicated that the performance of students in the experimental group in decoding was significantly higher in the posttest, where t(39) = 31.441, p < .00005. Likewise, in comprehension, the experimental group achieved significantly higher scores in the posttest, where t(39) = 15.322, p < .00005. There was a significant difference in the achievement between the two groups, where t(78) = 31.010, p < .00005. This indicates that synthetic phonics could be effective in developing early reading skills for struggling readers. ARTICLE HISTORY

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