Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and I learned how to read using phonics. Phonics simply means sounding out letters to identify a word. I’ve only recently learned that’s not the only way children are taught to read. There’s another method, called the “whole word” method, where children aren’t taught to sound words out but are instead expected to recognize a word on sight without picking out individual letters.
The whole word method is similar to speed reading, except that speed reading involves instantly intaking whole sentence and paragraphs. This is an advanced reading technique and, in my non-expert opinion, not the best way to learn. Phonics teaches children not only how to recognize words in their language, but also sets them up to learn words in other languages with the same sounding-out technique.
If you’re brushing up on your reading skills, especially in a second language, it never hurts to go back to basics. Start with phonics. And then start reading whole words.
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