Some teachers ask if Word Level Teaching should be 'synthetic phonics' or 'analytic phonics'?Synthetic phonics usually involves part-to-whole learning, that is, children being taught 'lettersounds' (in a 'word-free' stage) so that they can blend (synthesise) the 'letter sounds' (the parts)to create words (the wholes). Analytic phonics usually involves whole-to-part learning, that is,children analyse lists of words (the wholes), usually learnt by sight in a 'phonics-free' stage, todetermine the parts (starting, usually, with the 'letter sound' at the beginning of the words). Webelieve that children should be taught to use both processes, starting first with guided part-to-whole learning (Keyword Synthesis is taught at Stage 7) and progressing to interactive whole-to-part learning (Keyword Analysis is Stage 9). However, we do not believe that this learning shouldbe through using the artificial and restrictive 'letter sounds' of "Old Phonics" (also known as theOne-Letter-Makes-One-Sound-Method or the acronym OLMOSM) because teachers using 'ArtificialSynthetic Phonics' are only able to help their learners decode a very small percentage of the five-hundred basewords of English, many of which occur frequently in even the most basic of books