Why do you need to know the alphabet?

Answer 1

It has been a useful medium for teaching pre-schoolers, even alphabet soup has been employed to encourage reading skills. In early American school houses six things were essential to be considered an effective teaching environment: A chalkboard, a US and World Map, an Alphabet board in both the print and cursive, with both upper and lower case letters, an American Flag, a good paddle and his and hers outhouses. It helped if the teacher spoke descent English. One teacher and one room was normal for a country school. A swing, a flag pole, a big brass bell, a dictionary on a pedestal, a piano and a cast iron pot bellied stove usually meant that you lived in an affluent community or that the school doubled as a community church or Grange.

Answer 2

Knowing the alphabet of a written language is the key to learning words and learning how to read that language. Individuals have learned languages for the longest time from infancy. But that's spoken language. To have a hope of reading a written language, the reader will, first and foremost, have to be able to recognize and identify the characters. Later, the words are recognized, but in the beginning, its the individual characters that count.