Hello everyone,

 

I was very surprised when the alphabet cards I posted on the site were removed because they are not considered ESL activity. This is new to me because in the US teaching the names of letters and their sounds is one of the most basic ESL content matter. What is more, we start teaching first letters and their sound, and then reading of short words /CVC/, which are more or less phonetic - thus learning the sounds of the letters is absolutely necessary for teaching reading skills. Phonics are taught to English language learners all though elementary school, and some of the new testing data is based on reading letters and saying their sounds.

 

However, the fact that my material was not considered ESL made me think that maybe in many countries English phonics are not taught in the ESL curriculum.

 

Do you teach English phonics in your classes/countries, in which ways, and to what point?

My alphabet bingo game was removed but I couldn �t understand why. I thought pronouncing the letters and recognising the letters when they are heard was pretty basic and it is a fun way to practice them in a group.

I uploaded to another site and it �s been downloaded 1,258 times. 

In Japan, come 3rd grade, students learn romaji - the latin alphabet used as a written form of Japanese. This involves yet another phonics sytem based on the same letters! This makes for some interesting dicussions as the students become more independent...

 

Just out of curiosity, did you include any activities with your alphabet cards?

 

Cheers,

AB 

Alien boy, what kind of activities for alphabet cards have you got in mind? I would think they are what they are and the teacher uses them as s/he fancies. I class them as flashcards and as long as there are more than four, they should be accepted. They aren �t, though. I vote against removing this kind of activity and I point out that for students from many countries, the Roman alphabet may be completely new and we need to teach it. 

The good news is, you can get phonics activities elsewhere. And I hope I don�t sound too jaded, but you can get anything else under the sun elsewhere, as well as on here. I am so impressed with members who upload and download ws after ws on topics which have been done to death. It seems our appetite for wss is unquenchable. (I am guilty, too).