This article is devoted to the comparison of the existing methods of teaching primary school students to read in English. There are 2 widespread methods — a traditional one (when students learn the rules of reading) and the whole-word one (when students read words as a whole unit). The article states the advantages and disadvantages of these methods, concentrating on the psychological characteristics of primary school students. The author comes to the conclusion, that the only right way is to combine these methods, as it was done in Spotlight 2–4. This student-book is a very good example of helping students to begin reading and fall in love with the English language.

Keywords: reading, primary school students, Spotlight, whole-word reading, motivation.