It has always puzzled me that so many college reading courses and teachers continue to promote and use "whole word" or "sight" techniques with children who are either learning to read or are in need of remediation. Even the popular phonics-linguistics methods, though a considerable im provement on basal readers, very often do not place sufficient stress on the auditory-vocal aspects of language nor on the correct sequential introduction of phonemes and graphemes. To date all method comparison research has come out in favor of code breaking systems for teaching reading (Chall 1967; Bannatyne 1971). The English language is a phonetic language in which the visual sym bols (graphemes) represent sounds (phonemes) and it is the 48 or so sounds which form words. The visual symbols (graphemes) never directly repre sent objects or concepts (meanings) except in ideographic or logographic languages such as Chinese. In a phonetic language meanings are always the property of (are associated with) the spoken word, not the printed word. The printed word is associated only with the spoken word. English is a phonetic language. The word "phonetic" means that the visual symbols do in fact represent sounds, not meanings. However in my research reported elsewhere (Bannatyne 1971) there was no significant cor relation between written spelling and visual sequencing skills as measured on the Revised Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) visual sequencing subtest. There was a significant correlation between written spelling and sound blending which is obviously an auditory vocal sequencing skill. The only significant correlation I could find between written spelling and visual processes was one correlation with unit design memory (single shapes not sequenced designs). Obviously there is no concept or object mean ing attached to unit designs (single shapes) whether letter configurations or