The article focusses on developing reading by Polish young learners of English as a foreign language. The discussion is conducted within a psycholinguistic componential perspective, which allows for a detailed analysis of various components that constitute the reading skill. Most attention is given to phonological awareness at the decoding stage of reading and its role in beginning reading. First, the author deals with syntactic and orthographic differences between reading in English and reading in Polish. The results of several cross-linguistic studies are presented to illustrate the importance of inter-lingual differences in reading in a foreign language. Then the article reports on the analysis of five coursebooks of English for Polish young learners. The study aimed to investigate how each of the coursebooks develops the reading skill. The analysis looked at the methods of teaching reading, types of reading tasks, the explicitness of phonological instruction, presentation of letter-sound correspondences and the development of other reading-related abilities. The results of the study revealed that the coursebooks differ in the way they teach beginning reading, raising important questions of both didactic and theoretical nature.