When you are starting to learn Spanish, it’s important to learn the Spanish alphabet words. It is not so important that you know the names of each letter (although that can be helpful), but you must know the sounds that each letter makes. Spanish is much easier than English in that regard, most letters make only one sound….including the vowels!!!! This makes learning to read in Spanish easy.
Spanish alphabet words
The best way I know to help get the letter sounds ingrained in my new students is to teach them words that use the sound for each letter. In my classroom, I have these posted on the wall and students can refer to them at any time. If they can learn these words, they will help the students recall the correct sound for each letter. Of course, there are many words that students could use…I chose a word that was easy to remember. Also, I found cute clip art that represented each word. No matter what your age is, the cute clip art helps your brain remember better for some reason. (I can remember a silly picture on a meme much quicker than I can an actual picture of something).
Remember! In the beginning, it is not important that you learn the letter names in Spanish. However, you MUST learn the sounds that the letters make. I was often questioned in my Spanish classes as to why I didn’t teach the alphabet song at the beginning of Spanish I. While learning to sing the alphabet song is cute…I want my students to focus more on the letter sounds than the letter names. The alphabet song is really teaching the alphabet names and not the sounds! Spanish phonics is very straightforward. Most letters including the vowels have only one sound. This makes learning Spanish phonics very easy for English language learners. To make it simpler, many of the letters are quite similar to their English counterpart (like p d and t). Therefore, you really only need to focus on the letters that are very different and focus your memory efforts there (j g and h for example).
Be sure to check out our video about the alphabet sounds in Spanish here.
Resources at My Bilingual Life
We have flashcards for these words that you can use to practice.
We also have a coloring book to help you remember. (Coloring books are great for all ages when you are learning a language!)
You can save money by purchasing both the coloring book and the flashcards as a bundle!
We also have a video on our YouTube channel that you can use to listen to the pronunciation.
Here are words with each of the Spanish letter sounds to practice:
