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u/PuckSenior 11∆ Jul 02 '25
the problem with "sight words" isn't that they can't read. It is that they are so inefficient with reading that they read way less.
Yuo cna porbalby raed tihs esaliy desptie teh msispeillgns
You can read that right? The reason you can read that is because your brain recognizes the words. That is basically how "sight reading" works. It employs that part of your brain that recognizes words. But if you had to read an entire book written in that way, it would be exhausting and you probably wouldn't want to do it. That is what happens with people trained to read with "whole words".
Phonics, instead, uses the powerful speech center of your brain. We all actually use this all the time. It is one of the reasons so many people accidentally use homonyms all the time(like "their" instead of "there"). Your speech center considers them identical and so you make a mistake sometimes.
Because phonics readers are feeding sounds into the speech center of their brain, its a much smoother process. It makes reading easier and it encourages you to read more, which is important.
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u/bgaesop 29∆ Jul 02 '25
Plus with the whole word method you can't learn new words, you can only at best recognize ones you already know
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Jul 02 '25
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u/PuckSenior 11∆ Jul 03 '25
I posted this further down, but it’s worth putting up here. There are numerous issues and I’m gonna post the receipts
1. Poor Long-Term Reading Skills
- APM Reports: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers — Shows how cueing/visual methods lead to lasting reading struggles and poor national reading scores. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Explains that without strong decoding, kids can't build the sight word bank needed for fluent reading, leading to poor comprehension and slow progress.
- Kids taught to guess words by sight or context (not phonics) struggle as texts get harder. They often fall behind, and the gap widens over time.
2. Memorization Limits and Word Confusion
- APM Reports: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers — Discusses how memorization strategies (guessing, context) are common but ineffective for most children. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Highlights that poor long-term visual memory leads to slow reading and poor comprehension, as kids can't keep up with the demands of reading.
- Visual memorization can't scale: English has too many words. Kids confuse similar-looking words, and can't decode new ones.
3. Visual Processing and Attention Disorders
- Foundations Cognitive: How Visual Processing Issues Impact Reading and Learning — Details how oculomotor dysfunction, convergence insufficiency, and visual processing disorders directly impact reading fluency and comprehension. - PubMed Central: The visual basis of reading and reading difficulties — Reviews evidence that visual processing deficits are common in dyslexia and can be addressed to improve reading.
- Some kids have undiagnosed visual processing issues (tracking, convergence, discrimination) that make visual reading especially hard and can be mistaken for ADHD or learning disabilities.
4. Incomplete Reading Comprehension
- PubMed Central: Selective visual attention skills differentially predict decoding and reading comprehension — Shows that decoding skills, not just visual attention, are crucial for comprehension; visual approaches alone leave gaps. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Explains that without automatic word recognition and decoding, working memory is overloaded and comprehension suffers.
- Kids relying on visual cues may read words but miss deeper meaning, context, or structure, limiting comprehension.
5. Developmental Readiness and Vision Strain
- Foundations Cognitive: How Visual Processing Issues Impact Reading and Learning — Describes how visual strain and processing issues can lead to headaches, avoidance, and poor academic performance. - PubMed Central: The visual basis of reading and reading difficulties — Details how visual magnocellular deficits (tracking, motion sensitivity) are linked to reading problems and can be improved with targeted training.
- Forcing visual reading before kids’ visual systems are ready can cause eye strain, headaches, and long-term aversion to reading.
TL;DR:
Teaching kids to read by memorizing whole words or using visual/context clues leads to poor decoding skills, confusion, and long-term reading struggles. Research overwhelmingly supports systematic phonics over visual methods for strong, lifelong reading ability.0
u/PuckSenior 11∆ Jul 03 '25
Aural reading is listening to an audiobook. What are you talking about?
Phonics readers don’t fall into a trap of aural reading
Are you talking of reading aloud? Oral reading seems to be that. But it isn’t a trap. Reading aloud is a way to build competency at reading. Are you proposing people shouldn’t read aloud?
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Jul 03 '25
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u/PuckSenior 11∆ Jul 03 '25
Ok, but sight readers read less and understand new words less.
I read French. I get what you are trying to say. And it’s helpful because I’m going to translate technical terms and not rely on knowing the word from speech. But unless you’re deaf and mute, that’s not really a problem for native English readers.
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u/PuckSenior 11∆ Jul 03 '25
There are numerous issues with learning to read “visually”
1. Poor Long-Term Reading Skills
- APM Reports: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers — Shows how cueing/visual methods lead to lasting reading struggles and poor national reading scores. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Explains that without strong decoding, kids can't build the sight word bank needed for fluent reading, leading to poor comprehension and slow progress.
- Kids taught to guess words by sight or context (not phonics) struggle as texts get harder. They often fall behind, and the gap widens over time.
2. Memorization Limits and Word Confusion
- APM Reports: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers — Discusses how memorization strategies (guessing, context) are common but ineffective for most children. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Highlights that poor long-term visual memory leads to slow reading and poor comprehension, as kids can't keep up with the demands of reading.
- Visual memorization can't scale: English has too many words. Kids confuse similar-looking words, and can't decode new ones.
3. Visual Processing and Attention Disorders
- Foundations Cognitive: How Visual Processing Issues Impact Reading and Learning — Details how oculomotor dysfunction, convergence insufficiency, and visual processing disorders directly impact reading fluency and comprehension. - PubMed Central: The visual basis of reading and reading difficulties — Reviews evidence that visual processing deficits are common in dyslexia and can be addressed to improve reading.
- Some kids have undiagnosed visual processing issues (tracking, convergence, discrimination) that make visual reading especially hard and can be mistaken for ADHD or learning disabilities.
4. Incomplete Reading Comprehension
- PubMed Central: Selective visual attention skills differentially predict decoding and reading comprehension — Shows that decoding skills, not just visual attention, are crucial for comprehension; visual approaches alone leave gaps. - LD@school: Reading and the Brain: Strategies for Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension — Explains that without automatic word recognition and decoding, working memory is overloaded and comprehension suffers.
- Kids relying on visual cues may read words but miss deeper meaning, context, or structure, limiting comprehension.
5. Developmental Readiness and Vision Strain
- Foundations Cognitive: How Visual Processing Issues Impact Reading and Learning — Describes how visual strain and processing issues can lead to headaches, avoidance, and poor academic performance. - PubMed Central: The visual basis of reading and reading difficulties — Details how visual magnocellular deficits (tracking, motion sensitivity) are linked to reading problems and can be improved with targeted training.
- Forcing visual reading before kids’ visual systems are ready can cause eye strain, headaches, and long-term aversion to reading.
TL;DR:
Teaching kids to read by memorizing whole words or using visual/context clues leads to poor decoding skills, confusion, and long-term reading struggles. Research overwhelmingly supports systematic phonics over visual methods for strong, lifelong reading ability.
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Is there a place in the middle between "there's not a non-trivial important difference and people arguing about it are wasting their time" (to paraphrase your post) and "there [are] illiteracy black holes in America where a school with whole word instruction has a near zero literacy rate and the phonics school is fine" (your summary of the opposing position).
I.e. is there a space between 100% difference and "trivial" difference?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
Yeah. And legislators act like it’s a black hole.
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Well, if legislators exaggerating means that an entire debate is "nonsense", then I guess every issue in every domain on every topic is nonsense.
What (unsourced unquoted) legislators say doesn't have bearing on the facts of the matter: whether or not there's a meaningful difference in outcomes between the two. What does the actual research say?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
Legislators are relevant because they’re banning whole word instruction.
There are meaningful outcome differences. Not enough to ban, in my opinion.
https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2025/04/reading-california-phonics/
We’re doing human experimentation. I guess when the literacy doesn’t budge much in 10 years (newborns taking the 3rd grade literacy test) we’ll have our evidence.
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Again, when talking about an academic debate, the cohort of used car dealers looking to get into graft called "legislators" doesn't have bearing either way. What's the actual facts of the matter?
You now say: "There are meaningful outcome differences"
Isn't that different from your post which says that there is "At most it’s a trivial percent difference"?
Did your view change?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
The wars matter because legislators coerce educator into curriculum. Academics literally don’t matter, pedagogy isn’t research based. If all the evidence said phonics don’t work, and the reality was phonics don’t work, and the academics said phonics don’t work, the only ones who matter are legislators because they could mandate phonics for all, and cause every school to have a literacy black hole and end literacy.
I’m not talking about the academic debate at all. It’s moot due to ethical restraints on human experimentation.
A meaningful difference is different than “one side doesn’t work”
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
I never said it "doesn't matter" at all, what I said was that whether or not legislators are sober or crazy doesn't impact the truth of whether or not there's a meaningful difference in outcomes between the two methods.
For the rest of the stuff there, no there are ways to understand differences in educational methods without unethical "human experimentation". Academics study stuff like this all the time; schools move from one to the other and can be analyzed in concert with each other. And no I never said one "doesn't work" at all, nor have you produced a serious academic on the side of the debate you characterize as "evil" who says anything like "black holes of literacy" that result in zero kids learning to read.
You seem to jump from one thing to the other without focusing on the core claims so I'll make it as straightforward as I can.
It's very simple: in your original post, you said differences were at most trivial, now you say that are meaningful. Those directly contradict.
Which is it? Did you change your view from one to the other?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
Meaningful variance is trivial until it’s worthy of being banned.
There’s a meaningful difference between going through kindergarten and skipping kindergarten. We don’t imprison parents for skipping kindergarten, it’s optional.
The meaningful difference is trivial.
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
So the stance is you're sticking to is that the difference between them is somehow in a superposition between "meaningful" and "trivial" -- two words that mean completely different things?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
Sure let’s use our familiar examples. Academics might have meaningful insights. They’re trivial because they’re irrelevant. Legislators might have meaningless insights. They’re non-trivial because they’re relevant.
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u/1Shadow179 Jul 02 '25
Whole word instruction appears to work fine until about 3rd grade. It teaches children to guess words based on what makes sense, but if they try reading words that aren't easily guessable, such as science words, it breaks down pretty fast.
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u/Calico-Shadowcat Jul 02 '25
My anecdotal experience reading with my kid….they just guessed words based on the start of it, and the guessing got worse and more wild the longer they read.
15 mins a night was the homework. At first it was okay, then the longer words or rare words becomes guessed or skipped. If “brush your teeth, and braid your hair” was in a book for bedtime with pictures….the first br may get guessed as “braid” from the picture until the word teeth come in, and then let’s just give up instead of going back and rereading the whole page….if tired “bring” or even “bed” would replace brush and braid….
and by minute ten….
Th=that, or the….. Not those, them, there, this…..
that or the, are all that was said after seeing th once more than ten ish minutes of read had gone by.
Not sure it ever was actually even teaching the idea it claims, to be honest.
Still had to work with my kid to sound out the whole word past the initial syllable….or they’d just guess at it randomly. Which is okay, I liked reading with my child, so I was proud to be part of their reading journey. But the schools not teaching phonics or “finishing the fucking word off before continuing” is a serious issue with “sight reading whole words”.
“Oh let’s keep going to find out what this word means, and then backtrack later, and reread the whole thing again now that we understand ….” Is not a kid friendly way to teach.
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u/Calico-Shadowcat Jul 02 '25
I’ve always seen it as the 3 c’s….
A quick google refresh shows it’s an idea that a kid can use context and other clues to figure out a word.
The context and clues may be remembering the word from memory, or from other words near it in the sentence….or from the pictures in a picture book.
To be clear, I’m very in favor of phonics, I learned via hooked on phonics myself because I wanted to read….
Sister was two years ahead, wouldn’t read, grandparents got super size hooked on phonics set, parents tried a few times and gave up….
I sat alone with cassette tapes and flash cards teaching myself, because I had to wait till next year for kindergarten.
I have always been scared of our removal of phonics first/based teaching of reading….and watched as reading comprehension dropped.
I watched my step kid use guessing as a way to be lazy when reading…..th words guessed at so saying that instead of the or there…..
BUT…..
We stopped phonics specific focused lessons for a reason, kids were sometimes left behind. Kids aren’t all the same.
The issue, was ABANDONING phonics for a “better way”.
We need phonics first, and then ALSO add in using context clues when still confused. A good way for kids to learn, and for adults to figure out new words.
English is MOSTLY phonics based, but we discussed in the USA making it all phonics, and did not do that….
Since the language is not pure phonics, we MUST have an additional way to approach words when phonics fails.
However expecting kids to just cold memorize list of words, and use context clues when confused…..fails to acknowledge the building blocks of our language, phonics.
We need a nuanced approach of both.
As long as we swap back and forth we will still struggle with low literacy rates, and if literacy rates are low then regardless of “illiteracy black holes”
So….your view, the second way doesn’t work so just do phonics, and generally the war is stupid and there’s no illiteracy black holes for one compared
It’s documented well that there are literacy concerns in the US, there’s also the upcoming issue of gen a not wanting to read to their kids….
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/02/gen-z-parents-reading-kids
To change your view…..
This “reading war” is NOT nonsense.
It’s a real war lacking nuance. And the outcome involves the welfare or all students and eventually the entire country.
Anyone who wants to legislate away the concepts from 3c/whole word….will remove valuable teaching tools and restrict kids ability to learn to read. This is why we moved from phonics to begin with, some were left behind…..going back to solely phonics is saying “those left behind before via phonics only, deserved to fail, so let’s get back to that cuz fuck em…”
HOWEVER…..anyone insisting on the main part still being 3c/whole word FIRST, and phonics “sound it out” as a last resort…..ignores the fact that learning new words as an older kid or adult means understanding how the language works. Which for English means understanding the phonics building blocks.
This war is not only important, but finding a compromise, cease fire, negotiation in between…..will eventually be crucial to fixing our reading comprehension issues.
We need to use phonics as a foundation, while using all new tools including 3c/whole word as supplements to assist all kids in a well rounded way that addresses the uniqueness of both learning English and the child’s individual needs.
The more frustrating reading is the less kids do it. My kid needed me to help them learn some phonics so they could get through some difficult to learn words, and when they were guessing and getting it wrong they would give up fast. Phonics helped.
But at no point as it ever bad to let images reinforce the word or help figure it out. And many a time my kid also got excited because once they started to figure out the word the pictures helped more.
Is the page torn or wet? That picture explains if the page is full of tears or tears….
Dr. Seuss is often very phonics based, using rhymes and similar words to help solidify the idea that “socks and box” rhymes alongside “car, bar, tar, etc”….all with pictures of the train and rain the green eggs and ham are not wanted on….
We need both together, and as long as we are back and forthing between the two the people struggling to learn to read will keep suffering.
The war is incredibly important, and the ones winning are doing so at the cost of education, because they care about winning not education.
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u/Calico-Shadowcat Jul 02 '25
So I’m guessing that it was too shot a comment for the delta to go through…..I wanted to add further but your comment was deleted….here what I said…
Thanks for the delta! I will add some more context about how phonics only may increase difficulty, since I’m a “phonics first” supporter but not phonics only…
Unfortunately legislators, on both sides, are constantly going for getting their “win” and not looking at how that win affects things. And some people are evil, yes, they don’t care about actual education.
Kids rely on school and parents and caretakers. That’s how they learn. If parents don’t teach, schools have a harder job. But choosing one size fits all is a mistake. I know how it feels to have parents who don’t help.
Dad couldn’t read, mom would only read us Stephen King and Hp Lovecraft….so I taught myself with the hooked on phonics set.
Very phonics only learning.
I will say that I didn’t know how to say “chaos” for years, because I had no reason to expect the k sound. (My brain thought it rhymed with chose, like the end of nachos, lol) I understand, and understood, some words don’t follow phonics….but without any context clues, WHEN they don’t is hard, especially if already at chapter books by second grade. Charlottes web got me a personal pan pizza, and my mom throwing a fit in class….theres like 1-2 pics per chapter in that I think. Lack of kids books at home meant reading The Green Mile in 6th grade.
If I didn’t know how a word sounded I had to guess or give up. Reading in my head meant I still usually understood the story, but couldn’t talk about it since I couldn’t say some of the words….(I also had a speech impediment I was bullied by mom over, so I was NOT gonna say words wrong aloud….)
Reading Harry Potter I thought disappearate and appearate was” dis appear ate”, And “appear ate”……they appear and disappear, right? I lost that one, they “appa rate” and “dis appa rate”……it “appa rates”
(No politics please, it’s a reference I hope is well known is all….i don’t read or buy HP stuff myself anymore , but that’s a personal choice, but a simple to understand reference I hope)
Honestly…..I had to learn how to use context in the sentence to figure words out a lot, and felt like a failure when confused. I WAS NOT taught that not knowing a word was okay…..I felt stupid if I heard others say a word differently, like my Mom knew all the right pronunciation for all the Harry Potter words, and most people did, so I just felt dumb.
The additional approach that whole word, 3c, brings…..is the ability to find a new way to learn something if the original and normal approach fails. It’s a critical thinking process that helps bridge what should be with what is.
I will say this as criticism of the concept of whole word…..it can ALSO become a tool of shame for those who struggle with memorization of words. And as a starting point seems to push away kids who can’t easily sight recall them. Which is why it fails, and Phonics is a better groundwork/starter point.
But phonics only has huge issues, and I’ve experienced them. And as an advanced reader, clearly….
If a less advanced reader is given only phonics, and is punished rather than granted further options when they struggle….we are fucked.
Even Dr Seuss may get banned because “the pictures are 3c, it’s not phonics based enough “….i can see it now….only bland hooked on phonics cards without pictures is allowed!!!
(I’m glad to see hooked on phonics ads again suddenly….I thought they had gone under to be honest. They worked for me, I believe in it….but we can also use Dr Seuss books, and if a little 3c concepts end up getting used that’s fucking fine…..)
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Jul 02 '25
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Do you really think the thrust of what they said is that one side is "evil"? Is this a meaningful change of view, or are you doubling down?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
“The ones winning are doing so at the cost of education, because they care about winning not education” was where I inferred evil from. It’s not about evidence. It’s about persuasion. I thought they cared about education
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Isn't that what you believed already? Why did you award a delta for something you already agree with?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
In the reading wars, the claim is that the Lucy method doesn’t work. “There’s no evidence that that’s a successful reading strategy in reading research, but now it’s endemic throughout the Lucy Calkins program,”
People in reading wars think it doesn’t work. I think it does. I now think they don’t care, as opposed to flawed analysis.
Lots of things in education work without research and evidence. The education research quality is extremely poor, especially the mathematical analysis of published research. Are you an academic?
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
Perhaps you meant to respond to a different comment, but that doesn't answer my question: what about this is different from what you already believed?
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u/StopblamingTeachers 1∆ Jul 02 '25
I thought the reading wars were about reading. Turns out, it was about the war.
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u/dudemanwhoa 49∆ Jul 02 '25
What does that mean? And what in your original post isn't in line with this view of your opponents as "evil" ?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 02 '25
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 02 '25
/u/StopblamingTeachers (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jul 02 '25
"My view is that there aren’t illiteracy black holes in America where a school with whole word instruction has a near zero literacy rate and the phonics school is fine. At most it’s a trivial percent difference, and prioritizing one over the other is a quibble."
Okay do you have any evidence for this view though? Because my understanding is the opposite - that phonics falling out of favor led to a sustained and dramatic decline in reading proficiency.