[metmom]

Genuine question: Why are these two approaches defined as being mutually exclusive? Given the oddness of much English pronunciation,it seems to me that both are necessary even if phonics provides initial building blocks and instills the notion of generalized rule formulation a la Chomsky.

There ARE words in English that just don't fit the phonics rules well.

Those few I figure are no problem to memorize.

FORTUNATELY, they tend to be the shorter words.

[21twelve]

My daughter is diagnosed with OCD. She’ll be starting her third year in college - we didn’t think she’d make it her first semester, but she’s doing okay - but struggles.

She has a real hard time reading some of the research papers she is assigned.

“Well honey - just skip the words you don’t understand and by the time you’re done with the sentence or the paragraph you’ll have the gist of it.”

“Dad - you don’t understand. I have to know EVERY SINGLE WORD - I can’t just “skip it”! So she plows through the readings with the dictionary app running. I feel sad for her - but she is bright, and a hard worker.