Been reading all my life and started at 4. Have a decent vocabulary and can’t claim to “read/sound out” most words these days because when i see a word, my brain recognizes it “by sight”. It would be a step backwards to have to mentally go through the process for each word as if it was new to me.
Of course! Exactly!!Phonics is a crutch. After all, the Chinese system of drawing words is functional, so sight reading works.
But when I call Phonics a “crutch,” that is not a criticism, not at all. If your leg is broken, crutches are what you need. And if you don’t know the vocabulary by sight - because you lack long experience of reading - phonics is what you need. Phonics is the booster rocket that gets you off the ground; sight reading takes over gradually and naturally by the experience - of voluminous reading.
I learned phonics and have no experience of sight reading instruction - but I can’t imagine that it would be anything better than the long way around the barn. It looks like it would have to be painful to try to learn that way. Instructing in sight reading is putting the cart before the horse.
The same principle applies in learning the individual letters - you see an “e” and recognize it instantly. A Kindergarten or first grade student who had no experience of recognizing an “e” must be allowed the time to learn it; you would have the same difficulty yourself if you suddenly were faced with an alphabet - even the one you are familiar with - in which the letter shapes were utterly unfamiliar. Your phonics skills would suddenly be grossly inadequate - and your sight reading ability would be zero.