Denise, this may or may not be indicative of the overall situation- For the last 3 years I've played a small part in checking the Reports of students before they were sent home to parents.

In this particular school about one in three teachers was semi literate judging by their failure to present what was demanded by the Department and local authority; and by the number of nonsensical statements written on the reports.

One teacher had to rewrite 3 times to comply with what was called for; 5 or 6 others at least once.

Report time is a nightmare for the exec. at this school and meetings with staff begin months beforehand.

Rainier, great first post Sunday.

To Dane - the author (ie myself) never said that Chomsky invented, or even endorsed, whole language approaches. My minor historical point was simply that some of his ideas were appropriated (or misappropriated) in the early debate. To Candide - I agree with you on the irrelevance of that scrambled letter passage. Texts like that are often used by whole language enthusiasts (eg. Mem Fox) as evidence that the phonemic/orthographic association is not as important as the phonics supporters think. They don't prove any such thing, as you point out. To FrankGol and others who accuse me of being simplistic - my key point is that there is plenty of evidence from many different sources to indicate that phonics should be used very early on, as a foundation technique. That does not mean that it is the only thing you need to think about. I have enough practical experience of teaching kids to read to know that there are a hundred other things that matter as well. Nor should we just assume that all techniques claiming to be phonics based are equally effective.

In your article on Friday, Nick, you wrote: "For all that, the clear conclusion, warranted by both theory and empirical evidence, is that phonics should be taught first, as the foundation technique." The foundation technique.

Today (Monday) Nick, you wrote: "...my key point is that there is plenty of evidence from many different sources to indicate that phonics should be used very early on, as a foundation technique." A foundation technique.

Whole word approaches can be slip-shod Nick, when taught badly; but one of its benefits when taught well is that it teaches you the important difference between "a" and "the".