For many of our students, however, the most natural place to spell things out and to ask others to do so is in the classroom. Activities including any of these things are always good for practice of the English alphabet. All of these are most common on the phone. “Do you mean bat with a B or vat with a V?”), dictating addresses and dictating email addresses. Examples include double checking comprehension (e.g. What do you do with a bunch of letters?Īnother good way of coming up with classroom activities is to think about when and how students, and people more generally, use the names of letters. With all three of these suggestions, you have the two options of mixing the letters up with words as part of a more general pronunciation lesson or doing a whole lesson on the alphabet, perhaps even including all three approaches. C/D), and many books contain a similar activity where students match the letters by their vowel sound. This could include letters that rhyme with each other (e.g. Many of these are used as abbreviations in texting and informal online communication, making for a natural link to a lesson on “CU” for “see you” and “2moro” for “tomorrow”.įor letters of the alphabet that don’t have homophones in English, you could get students to match them to rhyming words, e.g. There are also many words that are homophones of English letters, e.g. B and V) that are minimal pairs of letters of the alphabet. For example, many of the activities described in the article on minimal pairs (see link below) will work with the alphabet, as there are plenty of examples of words (e.g. Most pronunciation activities can easily be adapted to be used with the alphabet. The easiest way to find and think of age-appropriate activities to practise the alphabet with adults is hiding in the second word of the title of this article – pronunciation. This article is about how to find and come up with sufficiently interesting and age-appropriate activities to be able to spend the right amount of time on this important point. This is an issue in our field because many adult learners do have problems with things like spelling out addresses and email addresses in English, something that often comes up in situations like telephoning and listening in EFL exams. None of these are suitable for adults, however, and there are few similar resources for native speaker adults for EFL teachers to attempt to adapt. You can also find other examples of people using zwo for the number 2 on Yabla German.Teaching children how to say the English alphabet is easy and fun, with numerous resources for native-speaking kids like the ABC Song and Sesame Street easily adaptable for EFL learners. Listen to Sissi sing the ABC Song and practice spelling out your name and email address using the German Buchstabiertafel. "The surface of "Kepler four five two B," such is the name of the celestial body." "Die Oberfläche von „Kepler vier fünf zwo B“, so der Name des Himmelskörpers." It helps too, when giving somebody an address or telephone number, to pronounce the number 2 like zwo instead of zwei, because otherwise zwei and drei can be easily confused: My name is Miller, and Germans nearly always think I am saying "Müller," so for clarity I often say " Miller mit M und I, also Martha Ida." BANNER PLACEHOLDER Here is a quick review with approximate English pronunciations of the letters of the German alphabet, which consists of the same standard 26 Latin letters as the English alphabet plus ä, ö, ü, and ß.Ī = ah B = bay C = tsay D = day E = ay F = eff G = gay H = hah I = eeh J = yot K = kah L = ell M = em N = en O = oh P = pay Q = koo R = air S = es T = tay U = ooh V = fow W = vay X = iks Y = oopsilohn Z = tset Ä = like the "e" in melon Ö = like the "i" in girl Ü = like the "u" in lure ß = ess-tsetįor clarity when spelling your name or an email address on the telephone, it is not a bad idea to learn die Buchstabiertafel too, since letters like B, T, and P can easily get confused.Ī = Anton B = Berta C = Cäsar D = Dora E = Emil F = Friedrich G = Gustav H = Heinrich I = Ida J = Julius K = Kaufmann L = Ludwig M = Martha N = Nordpol O = Otto P = Paula Q = Quelle R = Richard S = Samuel T = Theodor U = Ulrich V = Viktor W = Wilhelm X = Xanthippe Y = Ypsilon Z = Zacharius Ä = Ärger Ö = Ökonom Ü = Übermut ß = Esszet That is the alphabet you hear in military jargon, such as (in English) "Alfa Bravo Charlie" for ABC. But for cases where somebody might misunderstand you, for example stating your email address to somebody on the telephone, it is good to know the German spelling alphabet (die Buchstabiertafel) as well. Most of you probably already know the German alphabet.
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