In the last 2 years I've surveyed 2,764 dominican children between the ages of 8 to 15 if they knew the Spanish alphabet.97% of them didn't know and of the ones that did know 78% thought there are 27 letters.I did this because I was looking for the best school locally for my 5 year old son and thought I would send him to the school that the majority of the smarter children had gone to.He is now enrolled in the school everyone says is the best and after talking to the director she informed me that there are only 27 letters in the Spanish alphabet as she thinks that the Real Academia de Lengua de Espanol did away with the letters *che* and *elle*(ch,ll).She also said that according to the Dept of Education they were not allowed to teach the alphabet till the 3rd grade. I am very limited in the amount of Spanish that I know but of what I've learned it has become apparent that if you learn the alphbet and the sounds that the letters make you are able to pronounce any Spanish word as the sounds the letters make never change except c and g.....The question directed to anyone is, whould it not be better to teach the alphabet first as a foundation and expand from there?
- Thread starter Rick Snyder
- Start date
Education in the DR
Since I have 2 sons in grade school now,and two daughters coming behind them,
I would like to know what school everyone considers "THE BEST"? CC
I would like to know what school everyone considers "THE BEST"? CC
Others may know better, but from my own experience in the DR teachers mostly use a phonetic approach to learning to read -- the ma, me, mi, mo, mu approach more than teaching the alphabet first.
Regarding schools... this will depend on where you live and how much you can pay. I am aware that many public schools in the interior towns are better than many private schools in the cities. Also, from my recent experience as a parent -- sons 15, 13 and 11 -- what is a good school for one child, may not be the school that will work for another. You also need to chose the school depending on your own parenting style. Some schools will allow some degree parent involvement and contributions; others may not. And note that while the director of the school will set the standard, the choice of teachers will make the big difference. This means that there may be differences between one graduating class and the other. Schools can improve from one year to another.
Regarding schools... this will depend on where you live and how much you can pay. I am aware that many public schools in the interior towns are better than many private schools in the cities. Also, from my recent experience as a parent -- sons 15, 13 and 11 -- what is a good school for one child, may not be the school that will work for another. You also need to chose the school depending on your own parenting style. Some schools will allow some degree parent involvement and contributions; others may not. And note that while the director of the school will set the standard, the choice of teachers will make the big difference. This means that there may be differences between one graduating class and the other. Schools can improve from one year to another.
Hey Rick,
You've got a dilemma on your hands.
If you don't count ch, ll, and rr, there are 27 letters in the Spanish alphabet.
There are many well-educated DR citizens on this board who studied there.
My family lived in the DR when we were kids and went to private Dominican schools. Unless things have changed, Sagrado Corazon de Jesus and Lasalle are great schools for your kids. We were 6 kids ranging from 1st grade through 8th grade. The 7th wasn't old enough to go to school.
I have studied Spanish, French, Japanese and Italian in that order. From my experience, language is not taught beginning with the alphabet. I have taught Spanish. I taught English to 5 year olds and up in Japan. I am a native speaker of English, and have a degree in Spanish, thanks to the Dominican education I received; but I had to count the letters myself.
So to answer your question, IMHO teaching the alphabet is not the key to teaching a language at that age.
I agree that as an adult, the alphabet is an important tool for reading and writing, but you still have to be careful. Pronunciation is another issue. It can be affected by previous alphabets that you've learned?
Good luck to your child with his education.
Ciao,
mk
You've got a dilemma on your hands.
If you don't count ch, ll, and rr, there are 27 letters in the Spanish alphabet.
There are many well-educated DR citizens on this board who studied there.
My family lived in the DR when we were kids and went to private Dominican schools. Unless things have changed, Sagrado Corazon de Jesus and Lasalle are great schools for your kids. We were 6 kids ranging from 1st grade through 8th grade. The 7th wasn't old enough to go to school.
I have studied Spanish, French, Japanese and Italian in that order. From my experience, language is not taught beginning with the alphabet. I have taught Spanish. I taught English to 5 year olds and up in Japan. I am a native speaker of English, and have a degree in Spanish, thanks to the Dominican education I received; but I had to count the letters myself.
So to answer your question, IMHO teaching the alphabet is not the key to teaching a language at that age.
I agree that as an adult, the alphabet is an important tool for reading and writing, but you still have to be careful. Pronunciation is another issue. It can be affected by previous alphabets that you've learned?
Good luck to your child with his education.
Ciao,
mk
teaching vowels
In response to your question CC I was refering to the best that we have here in El Seybo.
Dolores, they all teach the vowels in the pre-school and in the first grade and then slowly add a constanant to the vowel to make up words, ma and the sound that it makes along with another ma for mam? as an example. I was thinking that instead of plucking out these letters to go with these vowels it would be better to teach the entire alphabet first and then the children would know from where the vowels and other letters come from. I think they need a foundation.
In response to your question CC I was refering to the best that we have here in El Seybo.
Dolores, they all teach the vowels in the pre-school and in the first grade and then slowly add a constanant to the vowel to make up words, ma and the sound that it makes along with another ma for mam? as an example. I was thinking that instead of plucking out these letters to go with these vowels it would be better to teach the entire alphabet first and then the children would know from where the vowels and other letters come from. I think they need a foundation.
MK thank you for your reply. You said it yourself IF you DON'T count the che and elle, there is no rr, there are 27 but there is the che and elle so in reality there are 29 and that is not what they are teaching. I don't want to argue but if knowing the alphabet at a later age is important for reading then it just seems to me that knowing the alphabet at an earlier age is important for reading also. I taught my son plus 9 other children in my barrio how to recite the Spanish alphabet in 2 sessions of half an hour each,all 29 letters. That was 11 months ago and those same children can still recite it because I taught it as so many of us learned the American alphabet as a song. I have offered to help in the school but they don't want any help because they say they are not allowed to teach the alphabet till the 3rd grade.
In short, in 1994 the ch and the ll were sort of dropped. The rr was never part of the Spanish alphabet, thus your opinion is valid, but somehow so seems to be that of the kids.
Teaching small kids the letters of the alphabet doesn't seem to serve any purpose. The purpose is not for the kids to be able to repeat the alphabet like parrots when they don't even know what the letters sound like and what they purpose is. You can't pronounce "M" without knowing the sounds "e" and "me". I am not a teacher, just a wild-ass guess, so YMMV.
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Thank you Pib for your reply. The RAE did away with the che and elle only in the alphabetation of words. That is why the new dictionaries don't have a section devoted to the ch and ll. Those 2 letters have been incorporated into the rest of the alphabet but the 2 letters do still exist and have their own names, che, ella.
For a child to learn what sound a letter makes he must first learn that there is in fact a letter to be learned. Theach them the letters then teach them the sounds that those letters make and because of the almost perfect phonetic setup of the Spanish alphabet a person can then pronounce any Spanish word. The Spanish alphabet has 29 letters that make 25 different sounds and 23 of those sounds are said when you recite the alphabet. I'm no teacher either but it just seems that it would be easier to grasp the concept of words if you were to first grasp the concept of letters, all 29 of them.
For a child to learn what sound a letter makes he must first learn that there is in fact a letter to be learned. Theach them the letters then teach them the sounds that those letters make and because of the almost perfect phonetic setup of the Spanish alphabet a person can then pronounce any Spanish word. The Spanish alphabet has 29 letters that make 25 different sounds and 23 of those sounds are said when you recite the alphabet. I'm no teacher either but it just seems that it would be easier to grasp the concept of words if you were to first grasp the concept of letters, all 29 of them.
If you are going to teach a child to read phonetically, the child needs to know the alphabet first.
If the child learns to read by sight words, then I guess the alphabet would not be important. Spelling will be much harder to learn this way.
All three of my kids could read by the time they were five. They first learned the alphabet song, then letter sounds, then vowels, then reading. This is in English, of course. When they began reading Spanish, we went over the letter sounds in the Spanish alphabet, including ch and ll, although they never memorized it. Most of their Spanish that they can read are sight words that correlate with an English word that they already know. Ex. rojo = red. By the time we moved back to the US, they were sometimes thinking in Spanish words. The pool is still la pacina.
I would think that phonics would be so much easier in Spanish, and I am surprised that reading is not taught that way.
This is all just my opinion as I am not a teacher. I do not speak much Spanish at all, and I read even less Spanish.
If the child learns to read by sight words, then I guess the alphabet would not be important. Spelling will be much harder to learn this way.
All three of my kids could read by the time they were five. They first learned the alphabet song, then letter sounds, then vowels, then reading. This is in English, of course. When they began reading Spanish, we went over the letter sounds in the Spanish alphabet, including ch and ll, although they never memorized it. Most of their Spanish that they can read are sight words that correlate with an English word that they already know. Ex. rojo = red. By the time we moved back to the US, they were sometimes thinking in Spanish words. The pool is still la pacina.
I would think that phonics would be so much easier in Spanish, and I am surprised that reading is not taught that way.
This is all just my opinion as I am not a teacher. I do not speak much Spanish at all, and I read even less Spanish.
I think person is born with the ability to learn all the sounds of all the languages.
As language is learned, a person specializes in the sounds associated with that language verbally. Once they are ready, they learn letters to be able to read and write. Letters are not necessary to speak in any language. The end result of knowing the alphabet is to be able to read and write. That's all.
There are illiterate people who spend their whole life not knowing letters. This can be proven by the high percentage of people who don't know how many letters there are in an alphabet, like myself - until recently.
It doesn't make sense to me to teach the alphabet as a pre-requesite to learning a language.
mk
As language is learned, a person specializes in the sounds associated with that language verbally. Once they are ready, they learn letters to be able to read and write. Letters are not necessary to speak in any language. The end result of knowing the alphabet is to be able to read and write. That's all.
There are illiterate people who spend their whole life not knowing letters. This can be proven by the high percentage of people who don't know how many letters there are in an alphabet, like myself - until recently.
It doesn't make sense to me to teach the alphabet as a pre-requesite to learning a language.
mk
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In my case I teach students to re-associate sounds with letters so that they can TRY to read it as it is spoken. Spanish is one of the easier languages to do this with.
In my classroom, we learn to read first. That is because in order to maintain constant contact with the language, the students must commit to read, as we have a severe shortage of native speakers here. At my best I can give them 50 minutes a day, with a sort of mangled Caribbean slant, and then they are off to study math, science or history.
We work on how to speak, how to express ourselves. These kids are self-conscious. My actors, my ADD kids do wonderfully, they chatter away in Spanglish, knowing it is acceptable to me.
The biggest challenge is oral comprehension. The kids simply do not get enough exposure to spoken Spanish. They know all my routines by now, but anything too random throws them, and often spoken phrases are not easily absorbed in the written word. We have a huge gap in learning styles, right brainers and left brainers. Some know "entregenlatarea" means "pass in your homework" and some know that "tarea" on the board means the next assignment. And some understand it both ways.
I agree with MK that we don't need letters to learn to speak. However, I find it helpful. When I hear a word, I have to know what it looks like for me to process it: a visual (mesa conjures an image of a four legged raised plane) and letters which further "hook" me into understanding.
One curiosity of that is that any word I learn is visualized in the language I learned it in. For example, when I physically see water, I see the word "agua" in my brain. Thank you, Sesame Street.
There are many people who can read second languages but fail miserably at making themselves understood in them, nor can they understand a native speaker. I fear for 80% of my class.
In my classroom, we learn to read first. That is because in order to maintain constant contact with the language, the students must commit to read, as we have a severe shortage of native speakers here. At my best I can give them 50 minutes a day, with a sort of mangled Caribbean slant, and then they are off to study math, science or history.
We work on how to speak, how to express ourselves. These kids are self-conscious. My actors, my ADD kids do wonderfully, they chatter away in Spanglish, knowing it is acceptable to me.
The biggest challenge is oral comprehension. The kids simply do not get enough exposure to spoken Spanish. They know all my routines by now, but anything too random throws them, and often spoken phrases are not easily absorbed in the written word. We have a huge gap in learning styles, right brainers and left brainers. Some know "entregenlatarea" means "pass in your homework" and some know that "tarea" on the board means the next assignment. And some understand it both ways.
I agree with MK that we don't need letters to learn to speak. However, I find it helpful. When I hear a word, I have to know what it looks like for me to process it: a visual (mesa conjures an image of a four legged raised plane) and letters which further "hook" me into understanding.
One curiosity of that is that any word I learn is visualized in the language I learned it in. For example, when I physically see water, I see the word "agua" in my brain. Thank you, Sesame Street.
There are many people who can read second languages but fail miserably at making themselves understood in them, nor can they understand a native speaker. I fear for 80% of my class.
off on a tangent
MK
I'm sorry but we seem to be speaking about two seperate subjects. I started this thread in the hopes of finding out if other people believed that learning the alphabet first was important for those children going to school. The last time I checked the school system in all countries starts out with the purpose of teaching the children how to READ and WRITE and not to teach a language. My Dominican Father-in-law is 69 and can't read the first word but speaks as well as the typical uneducated person so your statement that the alphabet is not necessary to learn a language is correct.
I have a copy of the Ley No. 66-97 El Congreso Nacional which is the law governing the education system here and according to it they are open to suggestions concerning their education system. As there has been a number of articles in the Listin Diario concerning a 48% drop-out rate in their high school students, the results of my survey and the things that the directors and teachers of the schools tell me I am wondering if it would be a good idea to see if the system could be changed. The system is broken there is no doubt about that and needs to be fixed. The question is does my ideas hold any water that is what I would like to know.
MK
I'm sorry but we seem to be speaking about two seperate subjects. I started this thread in the hopes of finding out if other people believed that learning the alphabet first was important for those children going to school. The last time I checked the school system in all countries starts out with the purpose of teaching the children how to READ and WRITE and not to teach a language. My Dominican Father-in-law is 69 and can't read the first word but speaks as well as the typical uneducated person so your statement that the alphabet is not necessary to learn a language is correct.
I have a copy of the Ley No. 66-97 El Congreso Nacional which is the law governing the education system here and according to it they are open to suggestions concerning their education system. As there has been a number of articles in the Listin Diario concerning a 48% drop-out rate in their high school students, the results of my survey and the things that the directors and teachers of the schools tell me I am wondering if it would be a good idea to see if the system could be changed. The system is broken there is no doubt about that and needs to be fixed. The question is does my ideas hold any water that is what I would like to know.
Still need help
In reality my question hasn"t been answered yet and I'm hoping for responses from those on the board that grew up only knowing Spanish and learned English later as I believe they are the ones that could better answer my question "would it be better for Dominican Children to learn the Spanish alphabet first and then learn which 5 letters are vowels and then proceed to build words from those letters that are already learned versus learning only the vowels first and adding letters to build words for the next 3 years"?
mk,
In response to your last post. If you think that the age of 5 is to young to learn the alphabet then at what age do you think it should be taught? How do you determine when a child is ready to learn the alphabet? It has been my experience, having been stationed all over the world, that almost everyone teaches their alphabet early on as that is what is needed to learn to read. "ellos aprenden lo que tu les ense?a" "ense?a nada aprenden nada".
In reality my question hasn"t been answered yet and I'm hoping for responses from those on the board that grew up only knowing Spanish and learned English later as I believe they are the ones that could better answer my question "would it be better for Dominican Children to learn the Spanish alphabet first and then learn which 5 letters are vowels and then proceed to build words from those letters that are already learned versus learning only the vowels first and adding letters to build words for the next 3 years"?
mk,
In response to your last post. If you think that the age of 5 is to young to learn the alphabet then at what age do you think it should be taught? How do you determine when a child is ready to learn the alphabet? It has been my experience, having been stationed all over the world, that almost everyone teaches their alphabet early on as that is what is needed to learn to read. "ellos aprenden lo que tu les ense?a" "ense?a nada aprenden nada".
"Perfection,is the ENEMY of GOOD"!!!
I think that your idea of changing the Dominican Curriculum is far fetched.It's like saying that their "Space Program" is off on the wrong foot!
FIRST,they need classrooms,second teachers,third "Free Books",desks,breakfast before school,and health care ,pre natal care,then you might want to look at what they are being taught!
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
I think that your idea of changing the Dominican Curriculum is far fetched.It's like saying that their "Space Program" is off on the wrong foot!
FIRST,they need classrooms,second teachers,third "Free Books",desks,breakfast before school,and health care ,pre natal care,then you might want to look at what they are being taught!
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
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