Designed to add to the existing knowledge base concerning the saliency of features used by children to identify isolated words, a study examined whether the method of instruction influences the extent to which various features are used for word identification and recall. Subjects, 117 kindergarten students from a suburban Buffalo, New York, school were taught five words per day for eight days using either (1) a context approach, in which words were introduced with pictures in the context of written and spoken sentences; or (2) a features approach, in which the graphophonic characteristics of the words presented in isolation were emphasized. The substitution errors made by the two groups in three separate instances were analyzed and compared to determine the graphophonic cues most frequently used by children to recognize words. Analysis revealed no marked difference in the word perception strategies adopted by the two groups. In addition, both groups showed a similar increasing tendency to base word recognition responses on rotated whole word form as practice with new words diminished. Children taught by the context approach were found to be more attuned to the initial morphological components in the target list than were children taught by the features approach. The findings suggest that regardless of method, beginning readers do not attend to medial parts of words. In this regard, more focus on medial parts of words in a features style methodology may result in a higher rate of word learning. (Three pages of references are included.) (JD)