Reading right

I don't doubt Anne Kent (Letters, 1 January) is right in saying that a combination of learning systems is applied better to enable the teaching of reading. But this does not discount possible other ways that play a part in the process but which don't have names attached to them – phonics, look and say, sight vocabulary or whatever. And "regularity" and "irregularity" in English language construct is unlikely to be as reconcilable as she would suggest – the more ex

There are many points of view as to which language of the world is the most difficult to learn. I learned Scots by a system that, in my view, is too unrecognised – the "natural" system – by familiarity and daily consequence, rote and repetition.

Alas the formal educational, system-obsessed system denied me free usage of this in the educational context. Nevertheless, I went into teaching when the gospel of concrete learning was in full evangelical swing. Anything too abstract was looked at askance. Most learning is abstract. Few things are more abstract than reading, or language.

IAN JOHNSTONE

Forman Drive

Peterhead, Aberdeenshire