Transfer as a result of synthetic and analytic reading instruction

Fifty EMR children and an equal number of nonretarded children were paired on the basis of WISC vocabulary scores. Pairs were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions (synthetic or analytic). Children in the analytic condition learned to read words printed in a contrived alphabet by a whole-word method, and children in the synthetic condition learned the same words by a parts-to-whole method. At the end of each of three learning sessions, children identified transfer words, including some which were consistent with those taught in phoneme-grapheme relationships and some that were inconsistent. The synthetic method promoted identification of both consistent and inconsistent transfer words for both retarded and nonretarded children.