“Teacher, why don’t we just sing the alphabet song?

”
By Susana Vázquez Martínez

“Effective teachers play three roles in children’s alphabet learning: they capitalize

on children’s interest, they know how, when, and when not to use talk about

alphabet letters; and they initiate a variety of contexts for alphabet learning.”

McGee and Richgels, 1989: 222

Whenever I ask my new learners at elementary school whether they know the

letters in the alphabet, their automatic response is to chant an alphabet song they

think they know, although they cannot recognize each letter in it. Why does this

happen? Why do my learners believe they know the ABCs because they know the

song? Why do some teachers choose a song as the unique way for students to

learn the alphabet? Has it truly worked for some learners?

A solid knowledge of the letters and their sounds takes more than just reciting

a chant. Yet, the alphabet is not only the foundation of literacy and reading, but

also a tool to communicate in real-life situations such as giving personal

information when checking-in at a hotel or enrolling in a course.

Thus, while many authors agree that singing the ABC’s helps young learners

to become familiar with the letters and their sounds, they also suggest a wide

variety of activities to aid acquisition through different techniques. Nowadays, since

technology has opened a world for learning communities and share-websites

culture, teachers can find a great deal of techniques and ideas to be tailored for

their learners’ needs.

 Therefore, in my own practice, I saw I chose to vary my teaching so as to help

my learners master the ABCs in a second language. Here, I had reflected on the

effectiveness of my teaching practice and stop trying what had not worked for

them, even when they were asking: “Teacher, why don’t we just sing the alphabet

song?” To offer an explanation for changing their traditional learning method, I

tested them with a few isolated letters and the spelling of a couple of words for

them to analyze how well they actually knew the letters. No further explanation was

needed.

To sum up, I can add that children still need to be exposed to several learning

strategies before they are able to identify each letter, relate its name to its common

sounds and, eventually, come to meaningfully use such letters to acquire literacy.

As McGee and Richgels (1989: 216) claim:

Alphabet learning has a long tradition as an important component of

learning to read and write. It is one of the best predictors of reading

success and parents of early readers report that learning letter names was

one of their children’s early literacy accomplishments.

Reference

McGee, L. & Richgels, D. (1989). “K is Kristen’s”: Learning the alphabet from a child’s

perspective. International Literacy Association. 43(3). 216-225. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20200340.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa4c889c2c1993

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