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What is not clear to me is how learning to pronounce a word leads to a quicker understanding of its meaning, and, thus, would necessarily help a young student to read more quickly and with better comprehension. Standard English, certainly more so than Spanish, is almost a different language when spoken as compared to its written form. For example, consider he sentence, "I can buy tomatoes in a can". There is no difference between the verb and noun "can" as written, but when spoken in common dialect they are hardly recognizable as the same word. If I were to render that sentence phonetically, it would have to read "Ikin buy tomatoes in a can". How could one associate "kin" with "can" as used in the affirmative? Even more puzzling, when used in the negative, as in "I cannot buy tomatoes in a can", the verb "can" resumes its phonetic similarity with the noun "can". There are thousands of dissimilarities between written and spoken English that can be spotted with a sharp ear, all of which would retard a student who relies on phonetics. It seems that way to me at least.

They say that one one can read the New York Times knowing only 600 words; I would say that if we leave aside the jargon in the Sports and Financial sections that number drops to less than 400. That is all it takes to get a good start on the road to reading. 600 to 400 words is well within the most reluctant student's ability, and if we could only teach our students that much, that is to read the NYT (okay, I know the Times is a a piece of liberal fish-wrap) we would not be saying that 80% of our high school graduates are illiterate.

Como como?

What is not clear to me is how learning to pronounce a word leads to a quicker understanding of its meaning, and, thus, would necessarily help a young student to read more quickly and with better comprehension.

Well, just maybe because the kid may know the word from having heard it and once he sounds it out, realizes, that, yes, he does know it after all even though he did not initially recognize it in print.

The other option is having people memorize every single word they'll ever encounter in their lives. Not only is that burdensome and tedious, but it leaves them totally helpless when they run into something they don't recognize.

Besides, phonics is about more than just learning to read faster. Faster isn't necessarily better. But mastery is.

Phonics is a tool to decipher language.

Are you a K-12 teacher or work for the government K-12 schools?

Just wondering.