Discusses various controversial issues in reading and suggests that most methods and materials in reading instruction are appropriate and useful in specific situations. References. (VJ)

The beginning reading method explained in this book combines a phonics approach with a sight word/basal reader approach, a method which the author used during her many years in the classroom. The author has found that children can become independent readers in two to four months and may read from 10 to 200 books independently in the first year.…

The instruction provided by two beginning reading programs (the Ginn 720 and the Palo Alto 1973 reading programs) are analyzed and compared in this paper on the basis of such factors as phoneme-grapheme correspondence and phonics instruction, sight word learning, and the development of reading comprehension. The comparison focuses primarily on the…

Selected recent research studies are reviewed under the following headings: (1) perception pretraining for reading, (2) hierarchical arrangement of reading skills, (3) comparisons of suggested sequences of different basal series, (4) code versus meaning emphasis in beginning reading, and (5) the relative effectiveness of methods involving…