Thursday, April 12, 2012

ESL Discussion Questions about the Alphabet

Alphabet

What is the alphabet?
What is the difference between "A" and "a"?
When did you learn the alphabet?  Do you know your ABCs?
What is your favourite letter?  Why?
Which letters are vowels?  Which letters are consonants?
Does pinyin use 26 letters?
What letters don't you like?
What does this mean?  The ABCs of computers.
Do you sort things in alphabetical order?
Is the alphabet easy?
What does this mean?   It is as easy as ABC.   What is alphabet soup?
Have the students heard of a game called scrabble?
In English we use Acronyms?  Letter words.  e.g.  USA FBI CIA  
Can you make an acronym sentence with your name.  Andis: Almost never does interesting Subjects.  Allen:  Always love ladies extra nice.   Bob: Big on Beer.

Class activities using the alphabet
Word association in alphabetical order.  Thing of a word that starts with "A".  Then find a related word that starts with the letter "B".  Students have to justify their choice of word.
Going through the alphabet, stop a thing in the classroom that begins with the letter "A" and then the letter "B".
Choose three or four categories and a letter.  e.g food, flower, river, city, movie.  Now find one of each that starts with a particular letter.  The first student who can wins.
Find an alphabetical list on the Internet.  Have students guess words from it.  Maybe divide the class into teams.

Also:  here is a list ranking the frequency of letter usage from most to least:

1  E
2  A
3  R
4  I
5  O
6  T
7  N
8  S
9  L
10 C
11 U
12 D
13 P
14 M
15 H
16 G
17 B
18 F
19 Y
20 W
21 K
22 V
23 X
24 Z
25 J
26 Q

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