The Ministry of National Education in Turkey initiated a new early reading instruction method in 2004. Analytical approach (Whole Language), as defined in the curriculum, was abandoned and phoneme based approach (Phonics) was introduced. This research has a two year longitudinal perspective and aims to collect the opinions of teachers about the phoneme and analytical approaches and to compare the performance of students who were taught to read using the analytical and phoneme based approaches in terms of fluency, accuracy, reading errors and reading comprehension. This report summarizes the overall results of the study. In both years, the majority of teachers had very positive opinions about the phoneme based approach. Results of the reading test in the first year demonstrate that the use of phoneme based approach causes slower, but better understanding. Results of the reading test, in the second year, showed that students achieved similar performances in all parameters tested. The findings indicate that the method of reading instruction is more critical in the early stages. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)