Alphabet Pronunciation Activities For

Adults
Ways to teach pronunciation and recognition of the English
alphabet, including in fast connected speech

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. 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. 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. 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.

Pron is pron

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. Most pronunciation
activities can easily be adapted to be used with 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. fee and V) or other
letters (e.g. B and V) that are minimal pairs of letters of the
alphabet. There are also many words that are homophones of
English letters, e.g. X/ex and B/be/bee. 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.

For letters of the alphabet that dont have homophones in

English, you could get students to match them to rhyming
words, e.g. D/me and F/deaf. This could include letters that
rhyme with each other (e.g. C/D), and many books contain a
similar activity where students match the letters by their vowel
sound.
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.

What do you do with a bunch of letters?

Another 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. Examples include double checking
comprehension (e.g. Do you mean bat with a B or vat with a
V?), dictating addresses and dictating email addresses. All of
these are most common on the phone. Activities including any
of these things are always good for practice of the English
alphabet. 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. You should therefore make sure that they know how
to ask for spellings (perhaps including more complex questions
such as What is the last letter of?) and always dictate the
spellings for them instead of/before writing them up on the
board.

Spelling games

The most popular spelling game is of course Hangman, in which

students guess the letters in a word while a hanging man is
drawn bit by bit for each letter they say which isnt in the word.
This is a bit childish for most adult classes, and Im not that
convinced it helps learn the spelling of words, but it is good for
pronunciation of the letters and there are more suitable
variations (see link below). The simplest change is to give them
a maximum number of incorrect guesses rather than drawing a
hanging man. You could also use whole phrases or sentences.
Especially with longer examples like sentences, you could also
play the game by starting at the first letter and working along it,
with each correct letter being written in after only one guess.

Most of the other ideas I have come up with are connected to

dictation. For example, you could dictate the spelling of a word
with one mistake included and get them to correct you as soon
as they spot the error, therefore practising both listening and
speaking. You could also dictate a word with the letters mixed
up and ask them to shout out the word once they have put the
letters into order.