Phonics Against All Language There is a battle going on in elementary schools around the world. This battle is not an evil battle fought with armies and weapons of mass destruction, but rather a tactical battle in which the two adversaries are known to us by simple sentences, phonetics, and the entire language. These two opponents use very different styles, but those who use a certain style swear by it almost religiously. Seriously, though, you might ask: What is the best method for teaching young students to read? Honestly, there is no simple answer; Education specialists have been debating the question of phonics versus whole language for years, and a definitive answer has yet to be determined. Literacy has myriad aspects that really depend on the student's learning style, and since no two students learn in exactly the same way, it is truly impossible to think that one particular style is superior to the other. Hopefully by reading this article and getting information about both methods you will be able to conclude which style you prefer. The first method to be discussed will be that of phonetics. Phonics provides students with the understanding that there is a relationship between phonemes and graphemes and that letters represent sound in written language (Brooks 36). Basically, this means that teachers focus students more on learning the individual sounds letters make and then learning how to organize these sounds to form words and then read the words. The English language has 44 phonemes that can be combined to form words (Books, Melanie 273). This seems like a lot of information for a young student to remember, but phonics has always and will always be a bottom-up process.