Learning about letters is an important foundation for literacy development. Should children be taught to label letters by conventional names, such as /bi/ for "b", or by sounds, such as /b[inverted e]/? We queried parents and teachers, finding that those in the United States stress letter names with young children, whereas those in…

Two studies compared children's knowledge about the letters in their name with knowledge of other letters. Findings indicated that Australian first graders and U.S. kindergartners and preschoolers had superior knowledge of letter-name, but not letter-sound, for first letter of their first name. Also, U.S. preschoolers were better at printing the…