Fluent readers are rapid, automatic, left to right decoders. Research from Marily Jager Adams, years ago. This was common sense to me. I can’t comment on speed reading, but I can tell you that systematic, step by step, letter to sound, spelling to sound instruction has turned many illiterates into confident readers who are also good spellers.
Whole language produces illiterates, and poor spellers to boot. I tested a 3rd grade class years ago at our local school. Out of 24 children, 19 were word guessers and hated reading. Who would blame them. Teaching phonetics is SO MUCH EASIER for the kids.
I recently bought a series of phonics-based readers for my 4+ year old grandson. We were looking at the labeling on the box while his mom encouraged him to read it.
He read the first word but didn't know the second word. He quickly made two or three guesses. This is exactly the behavior I wished to discourage. I believe that it is important to concentrate on phonetically easy words until the child builds confidence that phonics works. ( See Spot run.) Not until the child experiences the satisfaction of being able to read should he be challenged with more difficult words.
The hope is that when he does encounter an unfamiliar word that he uses phonics and context rather than simply guessing. My next purchase will be a dictionary and I will encourage his mom to teach him the key for pronunciation. I had a dictionary readily available when I was 4 and I highly recommend it.
My youngest (homeschooled by mom) started learning the phonetic alphabet at 20 months...and god forbid...with cursive sandpaper letters and is being taught cursive first.
Cannot say for certain it’s correlated but by age 3 she could use and define over 2000 words correctly and the concepts she has grasped since boggle people’s minds. We’ve incorporated tons of manual skills as well as their seems to be a ral link between physical manipulation capabilty and cognitive abilities in very young people