A couple months ago, I had a frustrating experience when preparing students for western unis and that with, both, my employer and the students. Having done it for more than 4 years and being frustrated with both, I thought it was time to change the age groups in the field. And, my one and a half years old son agreed with me too.

So, with some of my experience teaching early learners between 2001 and 2004, and with my short early learners training in Shanghai a few years back, to my son's delight, I applied for a kindergarten position.

One week ago, I was invited for an interview and a demo class. When my exited son and I arrived at the place, full of little kids just about one to three years older than Jay (my kid), we were received well and with all the respect. Jay instantly made some friends there which made me more comfy to proceed to my demo class.

As soon as I began, I realized I would have troubles singing the Alphabet song's tune and that due to the piano player, a lovely Chinese English kindergarten teacher whose tune was just sooo much faster than my singing of the carefully pitched tones of A B C D E F G .... I struggled throughout my demo class, although I got the main points of my lesson across to those fine but rather puzzled kids there. They were somewhat confused over the discrepancies in between the piano tune and my rusty singing voice.

After my demo class, the pre-school's fine looking leader, my son and I sat down in her cozy office to discuss my position there further. Everything seemed just right, except the reasoning behind my, to them, "SLOW SINGING OF THE ALPHABET". Apparently, and according to the pre-school's experts, the faster singing alphabet goes better with their kids and so we all should stick to it. My view that the kids could not get the letters right in such a hurry was swiftly overturned by the more than attractive leading expert there as, from her young experience, early learners DO NOT NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE PRONUNCIATION OF INDIVIDUAL LETTERS.

Now, I am quite a bit astonished, although still open up to opinions and experiences of others on. Also, I would be interested to know what some other, either good looking or not so good looking, experts around the world have to say on the topic. Please, enlighten me further as I somewhat feel that my previous experiences with 16-18 year olds for western unis might also have been connected to the practices from their earlier age education in the same country.

Cheers and beers to aphabet singing teachers around the world as well as cheers and beers to the new year