“Phonics and sight memorization go hand in hand to completely master reading but phonics is the best place to get started and become quickly successful.”
But even what you’re calling sight isn’t really - it’s more like phonics, with some deviations - since phonics can be used to to almost sound out even the tougher words in English.
If we had to rely on Whole Language, we would see a character string such as “lknpe” and remember that it means water, whereas as “lkcnpe” means waiter. That’s what Whole Language is...the letters mean nothing, just a bunch of useless symbols - it’s the shape of the word, and only the shape of the word that means anything.
Whole Word was ardy awesome concept; whole LNGUAJ redng? Wow! Sins I’m a graduate of Heln Wud Sped Reding. I reds 186000 wrds pr secnd.
BTW: Y U wan hav sx w me?