Purpose: This research specifically investigates the level of phonemic awareness on English vowels of the JRU basic education honor students in the activities of reading, listening, and speaking. It also examines how their English vowel phonemic awareness in reading is related to certain profile variables.
Method: The study adapted descriptive survey approach since it intended to describe the phenomenon of interest. For this purpose, it developed a research instrument, Vowel Phoneme Sample Test (VPST). VPST was administered in the summer of 2013 to the target participants.
Results: About 63% of participants from students got scores of 26-30; around 66% of them from Faculty obtained the same scores. On Pearson correlations of the English vowel phonemic awareness and the academic level of JRU basic education honor students and selected Faculty, reading obtained 0.398, speaking 0.206, and listening 0.355.
Conclusions: More than the majority of participants from JRU basic education teachers and students manifested phonemic awareness. They could speak English with vowel phonemes a bit similar to that of the native speaker. The language activities are significant of reading and speaking, whereas the phonemic awareness in listening as related to academic level is significant. This means the many of the JRU honor students could recognize and distinguish vowel phonemes as they go higher in academic level.