Sesame Street: Alphabet Songs Compilation | Learn the ABCs!

At our gathering last Saturday, questions arose regarding how and when to help young English learners recognize, recall, and write letters of the alphabet.

For example, with regard to a presentation on dyslexia, participants wondered where the small letter D came from, and why it was so different from the big D.

Though I'll leave reporting details of the session to others who attended or presented, I would like to share a clue to the origin of the letter D:

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

https://goo.gl/cG7rVN

I'd also like to point out a new video from Sesame Street (2017.09.08) offering musical alternatives to traditional ABC songs. Like most songs of this ilk, it focuses on capital letters.

What impressed me the most was the searchable transcript (lyrics) that you can display from the menu under the "..." button below the lower right corner of the YouTube video on site.

Select, "Open transcript," in the pop-up menu, then choose, "English - CC (English)," at the foot of the transcript window, for closed captions (rather than the auto-generated transcript).

Video source: Sesame Street's Back to School playlist

https://youtu.be/XWZ-iA3HMOU

Below are a couple of snapshots of the transcript display with the timecode toggled either ON (at 00.01) or OFF (at 03:29 of 12:50). If you click on the images below, you can see details.

Alphabet Songs Compilation [+ transcript {00.01/12.50}]

Alphabet Songs Compilation [+ transcript {03.29/12.50}]

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Animal sounds galore!

Adaptation of Markham's Lexi the Poodle by pab (2016.03.02)
Some rights reserved (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A professor in Adelaide, Australia, Derek Abbott, has begun studying animal sounds as they would appear in comic strip speech balloons, according to posts in The Guardian and on the Mother Nature Network:

• Why do pigs oink in English, boo boo in Japanese, and nöff-nöff in Swedish?
• Gary Nunn, The Guardian  (2014.11.17)

• Why do languages have different sounds for the same animals?
• Laura Moss, Mother Nature Network (MNN) (2016.02.23)

Both posts point to a website displaying Abbott's rather comprehensive collection of Animal Sounds, some transliterated into English from native language scripts. The MNN post also points to the video below featuring native speakers [of various languages] producing animal sounds.

Bow Wow Meow - Animal Sounds in Different Languages from Ke Nguyen on Vimeo.

Can you or, better yet, the learners you teach name all of the countries represented by flags in Nguyen's video?

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The PIGATE Blog and kindred sites–rites of passage

It has been a remarkable and stimulating yet tumultuous year.

The JALT NanKyu Chapter's Blogger blog passed away on Dec. 5th at the early age of one year, two months, and 14 published posts. So I've removed its RSS feed from The PIGATE Blog sidebar and replaced it with a new RSS feed from JALT NanKyu's recently established website. 

That removal followed on the heels of a similar removal of the disused NanKyu Chapter's Google calendar from The PIGATE Blog Calendar of Events page display and its replacement with a generic Japanese holiday calendar feed.

Previously invisible in The PIGATE Blog sidebar, but now growing slowly, is a list of cross-links to Other PIGATE Favo(u)rites. There now are two links there to sites from which feeds don't seem to be available (8-(:

1. PIGATE on Facebook (a closed group), and
2. JALT NanKyu Chapter on Facebook (no longer a closed group).

If you have any other favo(u)rite sites that you'd like to share publicly on The PIGATE Blog, either as RSS feeds or cross-links, please shout them out in comments [on this post]–OR, better yet, volunteer to lend a hand in fostering The PIGATE Blog, which was a year and 33 published posts old on Sunday, Dec. 13!

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