Sameer, This is very interesting, I think an educational website that I have seen do this properly is the Alphabet activity on <a href="http://www.starfall.com">www.starfall.com</a> I've used this site quite a bit with my kindergarten and first grade students in the past and have even seen it in use with Adult Ed students at an adult literacy program locally. I believe Starfall uses a combination of calling the letter by name but also placing an emphasis on the sound that the letter makes in different words. -Nicco <div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Sameer Verma <<a href="mailto:sverma@sfsu.edu">sverma@sfsu.edu</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hello everybody, This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says "a" when "a" is pressed and not the *sound* of the letter "a". Montessori teachers teach the shape and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did not have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have an option in Speak to do so. I'd imagine that the sound of the letter would vary depending on language, right? cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA <a href="http://verma.sfsu.edu/" target="_blank">http://verma.sfsu.edu/</a> <a href="http://opensource.sfsu.edu/" target="_blank">http://opensource.sfsu.edu/</a> _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </blockquote></div> -- Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi