How neuroscience suggests that phonics works best. Compare Italian to English, for example.

Italian is a transparent language: it contains about 25 phonemes that require only 33 written [JH9] character combinations to represent. Seeing as the "rules of Italian" never change between words, few students struggle to master reading.

English, on the other hand, is an opaque language: it contains about 44 phonemes that require over 1,100 written [JH10] character combinations to represent. Seeing as the "rules of English" change frequently between words, many students struggle to master reading.

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And check out this video