Just Memorizing: ABCDE…R…T…T…T…
The message one gets as a parent in this, our modern world, is one filled with the trivial little facts that we as adults take for granted. Take the alphabet for example: I haven’t been teaching the alphabet, but The Girl is picking it up somewhere. Wherever she happens to be — in the bathtub, eating dinner, riding in the car, or out for a walk — she seems inclined to rattle off random letters. But then I’ve always been a little skeptical as to the value of filling a little brain with facts — as opposed to filling it with thoughts.
Is there a difference?
Now, as important as I think the alphabet to be — I am something of a writer after all — I am dubious its value for a less-than-two-year-old child. And I am particularly dubious because — similar to her ability to count from five to ten — I seem to get the feeling that she is not learning the alphabet. Instead, I have the feeling that she is doing little more than memorizing the sounds. Repeating words. Singing a little song that happens to start with “ay – bee – see – dee…” and so on.
Now, as un-scientific as my little observations have been, I’d like to tell readers about a little experiment I very recently performed to confirm this. And that said, I should add that it is not even that much of an experiment. Definitely not science. And actually more of — merely — a little substitution game. In fact what I tried was simply this:
1) I’d been listening to the Girl when she sang her little alphabet song, and realized that she was mostly picking up on little cues from what I said so she’d be able to sing the next letters — or “verses”, really — as we played.
2) I’ve also noticed that she has become a recent convert to the cult of Sesame Street, particularly one (annoying) little, red monster.
3) As I’ve sang the alphabet more often in the last few months than I’d care to admit, many times at her prompting, I’ve noticed that some of the “verses” sound like other words. For example, “L-M-N-O-P” sounds kinda like “Elmo has to Pee.” (Mature, I know. My wife has reminded me of that a few times already.)
4) And finally, I’ve discovered that if I just out (of the blue) say aloud “Elmo has to Pee” is a bit of a sing-song voice then the Girl quickly replies with a “Q… R… S…” and a sidelong grin in my direction.
Conclusion: I have none, really. Other than little games like this bend me towards the proposition that she’s not so much learning the letters as she is just memorizing sounds. Is that a bad thing? Subjectively, who cares. We’re playing, talking, interacting. Should I expect anything more from her at that age? Unlikely.
Kids learn that way – there is nothing unusual in memorizing sounds first, then learning what they mean. All she is doing is mental 'data entry' – the database clean-up happens in parallel, and for the rest of her life. It is the same with reading – we start by memorising our favourite stories, then gradually we associate words 'shapes' with words, then we learn to 'sound it out', until we have written the groove of decoding words deep enough. This is an interesting observation wrapped in a cute story, and that is great. But I don't believe for a second that 1) your daughter is not 'learning correctly', or 2) that the method she is using is necessarily bad or inefficient.
Thanks Seth. I like the analogy, and you're probably spot on with the analysis. I didn't mean to imply that it was a wrong way to learn. In fact, I'd wager if I looked at a wider sample it's probably fairly common. But I think I under-articulated the point I was going for — that there lacks much (as you suggest) structure or meaning to the information at this point as she learned raw data — and thanks for calling me out on that.
Actually, I think you were right the first time. I'm an educator and have been reading about language development for years. The alphabet song is an annoying, harmless, and pointless song that does nothing other than _maybe_ teach the concept that there are such a thing as letters. It's particularly sill in English since the letter names have little to do with their sound (hence Montessori schools opting for calling them by their sound first, then teaching the letter name). Look at Spanish. Their letter names are the sounds and everything is spelled like it sounds. No time wasted with spelling bees there!
I'd go on about the pointlessness of teacher letters and words out of context, but I think you get the idea. The best way to teach kids to read is just to read to them a whole lot and they'll begin to figure it out on their own–despite the interference of most of what us teachers do with them at school.
For more, check out the work of Stephen Krashen (particularly The Power of Reading) or Frank Smith.
Actually that's an interesting point. My mother — grandma — who teaches elementary school suggested the other day that I stop saying the alphabet and instead say the letter sounds. Of course, I the smart-ass reminded her that some of the letters had more than one sound and went on to demonstrate. But yeah. What is the point of learning the alphabet names at all, really?
By the way, does anyone know why where the "alphabetical order" came from?
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Skepdad was started as one man’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas about bringing up kids to be critical thinking adults in a world filled with superstition, mysticism, and pseudoscience.
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