Earlier this year I was in a meeting in which a reading specialist in a primary school stated that the word through, “couldn’t be sounded out in a million years.” This statement is very interesting.  The idea the teacher was expressing so colorfully, namely, that attention to letter/sound relationships is of little or no use for learning how to read certain words, is a view shared widely not only by teachers who are skeptical of the use of phonics generally, but also by many enthusiastic proponents of systematic phonics instruction.   Unfortunately, this view, though quite widespread, is demo ..read more