The method that works for some and makes others illiterate is insanely stupid!
For those it does work, it results in faster reading.
Yes, and so is with the Chinese ideograms. This is the main limit for the cultural advancement in China. Few people can read more than a thousand of words and to master thousands you need to become a scholar. Anyway the ideograms are better suited for "look-and-say / whole-word" method as they derive from actual pictures. Making ideograms from combinations of letters is inferior.
Some people have better image memory and can read faster but those who could not are often more talented and do not deserve to be crippled.
In contrast, people who learn with phonics, develop a habit of sounding out words in their mind, which slows them down and is very difficult to break.
Well this is the difference between the true alphabet and ideograms. Once you associate letters or group of letters your can read almost EVERY word, even hundreds of thousands of words!
Same way is with musical notation - people who learned to associate notes with sounds can sing EVERY melody, not the few which they memorized by whole look.
Another problem with the phonics method is that English isn't a particularly phonetic language. The number of words whose spelling doesn't match the sound is staggering, which then makes spelling more difficult for children learn to read phonetically.
True, English is difficult in that aspect but there rules which are less numerous and easier that even basic few hundred Chinese characters. Once you master these rules your reading skill is unlimited. And even if you do not master all rules you still will manage well.
You can notice that foreigners do not have much problems with learning to read in English. Why, it is because they were not damaged or made "dyslexic" by the "look-and-say / whole-word" method. They know that letters stand for sounds from the start.
Some of my collegues who were taugh the "whole language" method finished their reading in about half the time, and had the same level of comprehension. And this was after I had taken a speed reading class!
Well, you can learn speed without regressing to the ancient ideograms. Same is with reading musical notation.
Actually, it works for the large majority. If it doesn't work for a kid, he can go learn phonics. What's wrong with tayloring the method to the individual?
For those it does work, it results in faster reading. Yes, and so is with the Chinese ideograms. This is the main limit for the cultural advancement in China. Few people can read more than a thousand of words and to master thousands you need to become a scholar. Anyway the ideograms are better suited for "look-and-say / whole-word" method as they derive from actual pictures.
The whole word learning system isn't an ideogram system. It's a kind of a hybrid between that and a phonetic system. It's about recognizing groups of letters that combine into words, rather than literally whole words, except for very simple ones.
Some people have better image memory and can read faster but those who could not are often more talented and do not deserve to be crippled.
The vast majority can learn to read this way, and in the long run it results in faster reading.
Well this is the difference between the true alphabet and ideograms. Once you associate letters or group of letters your can read almost EVERY word, even hundreds of thousands of words!
Yes, but the key is to work in groups of letters & simple root words & endings, rather than sounding out letters. The latter approach, while perhaps making it easier to learn to read quickly, in the long run creates other problems with spelling and reading speed.