Sir, Ofsted’s chief inspector, David Bell, is right to insist that phonic synthesis should be a major component in the teaching of reading, for it alone enables a child to tackle an unknown word. He is equally right to insist that it should not be the sole method, since it does not get one very far with a word such as “laughter”.

Fifty years ago the battle raged in the opposite direction. The phonic synthesis method used by most teachers was decried as “barking at print” by proponents of look-and-say (whole word recognition) and the Sentence method.

Fortunately, many teachers just got on with teaching, knowing that different strategies were needed, varying from child to child and task to task. Let us hope this is still the case.

ADRIAN KING
Bromley, Kent

Sir, It is a big mistake to order all children to be taught to read by the phonic method. Much research has shown that the method is best suited to girls, while boys, with superior visuo-spatial skills, are best taught by the look-and-say method because of their ability to recognise the shapes of words.

This has been borne out by my own modest research and by my experience as a teacher of children with special needs. Of course, there is an overlap of these two different abilities between the sexes and, ideally, it is best to find out, by appropriate testing, which method is best in individual children.

PETER BIRDSALL
Harrogate, N Yorks

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