The effects of teaching English alphabet with and without initial introduction of letter names on Iranian grade seven students' reading speed

One of the most important steps in teaching English is teaching its alphabet to the learners. Implementing the best method will highly help teachers to achieve acceptable results in helping students to read better and faster. Two basic methods are frequently used by Iranian educators. Some start by the name of the letters and introduce the sounds that they symbolize later, while others are those who are very concerned about the sounds and tend to teach the letter names at the end of the course. Through this study, the researcher has sought to explore the effects of teaching English Alphabets with and without initial introduction of letter names on grade seven Iranian students reading speed. To achieve this goal, 20 grade-seven students (N=20), who were alphabetically assigned to two different classes (n=10), with no previous experience of learning English were taught using these - two - different methods.  Then they were asked to read 20 words as fast as they could. Using a chronometer, their reading times were calculated and recorded. According to their achieved time, they were given ranks from 1(the fastest) to 20(the slowest). Implementing the rank sums test  the results were compared and analyzed and then the z value for rank sums was obtained which was equal to -2.20(Negative  z value is due to assigning number 1 to the highest rank and 20 to the lowest one).The z critical for ά of .05 is 1.96.Knowing this, we can reject the null hypothesis and have the confidence in the conclusion that subjects in group A who used the experimental method (teaching the alphabets by their sounds and names at the same time) outperformed those  in group B (teaching the Alphabets  by their sounds).