This study examined the effectiveness of phonemic awareness drills on phonological awareness and word reading performance in English of Mainland Chinese students in primary school. Employing a nonequivalent control group design, the research questions explored: (1) whether phonemic awareness drills promoted phonological awareness with the English language; and (2) whether phonemic awareness drills enhanced word reading was generalizable across gender or if the findings were specific to gender. Participants were 202 students in grades 1 and 2, 95 who were female, attending a private elementary school in Hangzhou, People's Republic of China. Over a period of 10 weeks, 101 students in the experimental group engaged in phoneme production/replication, phoneme isolation, phoneme segmentation and counting the sounds, phoneme blending, rhyming, phoneme deletion, and phoneme substitution with English sounds. Assessments were subtests of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Elision, Blending Words, and Segmenting Words) and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Sight Word Efficiency). Analyses showed an important and consistent difference in words learned and phonological awareness gained by members of the experimental group, whether male or female. The findings strongly suggest explicit instruction in phonemic awareness promoted phonological awareness and word reading in English of Chinese primary school children. (Contains 52 references and 1 figure.) (Author/RS)