Nick Maley's article seems logical...but there's one important problem. He shows no understanding about how children actually learn and what motivates them to be better readers.

Analysing the phonetic structure of the English language is all very fine. But we need to know what the learner brings to the challenge of learning to read.

There's no warrant for the argument that because this is the way English works as a phonetic language that is the best way to teach children to learn it. (Besides, the phonetic structure is only one of the ways we can describe how English works; but that's another argument.)

Nick's conclusion that "phonics should be taught first, as the foundation technique" is simplistic. Thousands of families (and I'm one of them) have taught their children intuitively using the whole-word approach: labelling objects around bedrooms, kitchen etc; reading words in shopping malls; headlines in the newspaper; writing stories on wet days; playing school in the cubby house; reading voraciously to their kids and pointing to key words in books. Scores of opportunities are seized by parents who understand that the joy of what you read is found in meaningful whole words and whole ideas.

The question is not whether whole-word comes before or after phonics. That's a phoney debate. The real issue is when is it best for the child to experience the essential benefits that come from a sure grasp of phonics?

For many the introduction to phonics seems like a backwards step (e.g. Sally Morgan, "My Place": 'Every day I endured the same old adventures of Nip and Fluff' while every day she longed to move on to the reading feast in the library.)

There would be plenty of time for Sally to learn that ghoti could spell fish in English (gh as in tough; o as in women; ti as in station). Sally came to hate school because she was bored to tears by the phonics approach. A more subtle integration of phonics and whole-word is needed by many children - not one and then the next.

I tend to agree with most of what FrankGol says but I suggest that the reality of the teaching situation is even more complex.

Due to heredity, developmental variations and life experiences, children differ considerably in the types of learning abilities they bring to school. Some learn best through vision, some through hearing, some through touching and moving. Some need to reflect on new information or experience before integrating it, while others are to test it by immediate application. And you can list other differences.

Kids who have trouble with auditory perception and skills may fare better by starting their reading with sight-learning. The tactile-kinaesthetic (haptic) types may start better with, for example, letters and words made of sand-paper that they can run their fingers over.

Another point is that as the child grows the preferred modes of learning can change considerably.

So phonics is important, but not to the same degree for every child or for every stage of development. And research indicates that boys tend to be less able in the auditory department. Perhaps this is why so many of them tend to struggle more than most girls with a program based heavily on phonics.

So let's give phonics an important place in the school program along with sight-learning, whole-language, and other components. Apply each at the best stages and in proportions that suit the student's individual learning abilities.

This is a bloody childish argument: you try all the methods that you can, and even with a kid who is doing well with one approach, you give her a burst of the others. Of course, there's no one-and-only method. I love Sylvia Ashton-Warner's whole meaningful word method, but I'm sure that even she also used the phonic approach, not to teach kids 'ghoti' but to get a solid foundation with kiss, hit, cry, smack, eat, drink, sleep, burp, etc. - and once the kids have got a solid phonic grasp, then to move onto anomalies, of which as we all know the English language is packed, partly because of its bower-bird approach to pinching words from other languages, with their different orthographies.

In any good english language intervention program you would think that practitioners would use a range of technigues which include whole language,rote or phonics.

The traditionalists versus the modernists?

I reckon most professional people and parents readily engaged in trying to teach children language aquisition skills are too busy to engage in this petty ideological debate between idle theorists.

FrankGol writes: "The question is not whether whole-word comes before or after phonics. That's a phoney debate. The real issue is when is it best for the child to experience the essential benefits that come from a sure grasp of phonics?...A more subtle integration of phonics and whole-word is needed by many children - not one and then the next."

Loudmouth writes: "This is a bloody childish argument: you try all the methods that you can, and even with a kid who is doing well with one approach, you give her a burst of the others. Of course, there's no one-and-only method."

Duh?

I am baffled by the lack of interest or even of criticism of the experiments to resolve the phonics-WholeWord controversy put forward in Revolution in Education http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7010, OLO 20 February.
At present, all approaches fail weaker students. Whole Language, analytic phonics, synthetic phonics and eclectic combinations still fail too many disadvantaged students who do not arrive at school aged five with 5,000 words etc, and there is a long run of continuing failures into adulthood – see the recent news furore from an international survey www.acal.edu.au/publications/ papers/acal_view/acalview.shtml that indicates that nearly half of all adult Australians cannot read or write properly. (The survey, which involved analysts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics,www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/ 4228.0Explanatory%20Notes12006%20(Reissue)?OpenDocument reported that 7 million Australians are below the acceptable benchmark for understanding their own language. Radio National,The World Today, 21 February.http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2168798.htm)

Innovation is needed in all aspects of how literacy is learned and taught – and the aim of ‘Revolution in Education’ was to arouse interest in 'revolutionary ideas in Education'. At present fashions go round in cycles because none are fully successful – except for brilliant teachers, and only fortunate students have them.