i found this to be true when i was teaching my sons to read... even the so called "sight" words could be sounded out if you know the phonetics... btw--i am big on having my sons study Latin and Greek root words... this has proven helpful in growing their vocabulary... doing crossword puzzles on an almost daily basis throughout much of my life has helped me grow my vocabulary...
as far as grouping words, i did this when my younger son was a baby... i introduced him to words in groups... starting with parts of the body before he could even speak a word... i would say, "show me your eyes,' and he would blink his eyes... "show me your nose," and he would point to his nose... we covered a lot... toes, tummy, tongue, head, hair, hands, fingers, legs... etc...
then i did the same with types of food, furniture, clothing, colors, shapes, a lot of it before he could really speak... i placed objects in front of him and he would pick up the item i named... we used colored bean bags and crayons for colors, etc...
i taught him to recognize the alphabet and the sounds of the alphabet the same way...
by the time he was 16 months he knew over a thousand words... i agree with you about the suggestions in the article being crap... unless you are teaching babies... :)
Yes. I agree completely. My understanding of the article was that it referred to spelling [perhaps, I'm mistaken], and in that context, I found it, um, unconvincing.
You, on the other hand, were teaching concepts, and groupings are crucial for that -- even for older children and adults. It's fascinating to me that by, say, the age of four, a child in a well-functioning household, can understand the abstract concept "furniture" and knows that forks don't belong to it.
That's grouping.