Also, I learnt the alphabet in English singing a song I remember yet today, and I think that was a good way to learn the name of the letters in English, but this is useful only to spell a word, because you didn’t learn all the sounds the letter can have.

One thing also surprised me was the case you told about the 4-years old girl named Alice who said that her name has an ‘s’ but when she wrote it down, she didn’t see it. I think this is one of the advantages of the synthetic phonics method, because you learn the sound of a letter (or a group of letters) instead of learning only the shape of the letter. Also, you start teaching the sound with the shape of this sound (I mean, you start teaching the sound ‘s’ with the shape of an ‘s’, then, you can use other combinations of letters).

Maybe the synthetic phonics method it wasn’t the best one to teach the sounds in English, but, about my experience, it is a great way to introduce children the world of the English sounds. One positive thing is that children like the method, but maybe we have to choose our tools taking into account if they work instead of if children likes it, because it can be fun for children but they didn’t learn anything, and, as you said, this method can have some hidden advantages that we only discover if we work deeply with it.