Which of the following is inconsistent with the Analytical method of reading?

Methods of teaching reading fall into two broad families based on where instruction begins. An Analytical (whole-to-part) method starts from a meaningful whole — a word, a sentence, or a story — and only afterwards draws out its letters and sounds; a Synthetic (part-to-whole) method does the reverse, building from individual sounds or letters toward whole words.

Look-and-Say, the Sentence method, and the Story method each begin with a meaningful whole (a word, a sentence, or a story respectively) and only later break it down into smaller units, so all three follow the Analytical sequence. The Phonetic similarity method instead groups words by their shared sounds (such as cat, mat, and bat); in the reading-pedagogy classification used here, this sound-symbol-oriented technique is placed in the Synthetic family rather than the Analytical family, which starts from a meaningful whole.

• Look-and-Say method: starts from a whole word recognised as a picture-linked unit — follows the Analytical (whole-to-part) sequence.

• Sentence method: starts from a complete, meaningful sentence — follows the Analytical (whole-to-part) sequence.

• Story method: starts from a complete story and works down to its words — follows the Analytical (whole-to-part) sequence.

• Phonetic similarity method: groups words by shared sound patterns rather than starting from a meaningful whole — in this pedagogy classification, this places it in the Synthetic (sound-based) family, not the Analytical sequence.

Since the Phonetic similarity method belongs to the Synthetic family (sound-symbol-based) rather than the Analytical family (meaning-first) used by the other three within this classification, it is the method inconsistent with the Analytical method of reading.