New Zealand's approach to literacy instruction is predominantly whole language. Explicit code-orientated literacy instruction is not favoured, however, most teachers are believed to include phonics in their literacy lessons. No study has been reported on phonics use in New Zealand schools. Survey responses on the use of phonics instruction from…

Found eight-year-old British children less accurate at rejecting psuedohomophones than at rejecting ordinary nonwords in a lexical decision task. New Zealand children did not show the effect. Argues that the difference stems from British children's dependency on sounding out words. (SAK)