Learning My ABC's.

Who needs U anyway?

Alphabet in another language isn't that easy to get the hang of especially with the trickiness of the English one. The usual suspects of alphabetical pitfalls are the i's and e's when German is your first language. Gosh how the kids battle with it.

Every so often I haul out my ABC's and give little quiz tests. Despite the eye rolls, most get it wrong and predictably stumble over the i and e. Small wonder when it is inversely pronounced in German.

i is pronounced e
and e is pronounced a

so you can imagine how imaginative some words turn out to be.

Often I do a small spelling bee at the end of the hour and thus it turns out to be a fun game after writing innate sentences in the present continuous, learning ordinal numbers or prepositions...

It sounds daft but I usually sing my version of the ABC in English while also writing the letters in bold capitals as a visual help for the kids, which most of the time means the song is sung ( by them! ) until the right letter is found. Well, today I was feeling rather embarrassed when I noticed a slight omission in my ABC. Goodness me, who needs those pesky U, V, W in any case!

My young pupil launched straightaway into the German version of ABC and saved the day by adding those three absconders back in. Oh yes, I was jolly embarrassed and mumbled:

" Oh dear, I think I need to go back to school again! "

Apart from that I also need to find more difficult words to let him spell, as after the first two or three letters he correctly guesses the word. Rather brilliant, isn't he?

Biggi