ESL Telephone Alphabet

One of the biggest challenges for English language learners, is talking on the telephone.
Without visual clues from body language, English is difficult even for native English
speakers to understand. When native speakers need to be clear giving information over
the telephone, they use special words to represent individual letters. Here is a useful
tool that uses basic words to help ESL learners spell information over the telephone.

Mr. Singh would be “Summer, Ice-cream, Number, Goat, House”

It sounds silly but that is what native speakers do. Use this list of simple words with your
students to help them spell important information.

A - ace N - number

B - boy O - open

C - cat P - people

D - dog Q - queen

E - east R - red

F - five S - summer

G - goat T - time

H - house U - uniform

I - ice cream V - visa

J - July W - woman

K - king X - x-ray

L - lemon Y - yellow

M - money Z - zebra

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