If you graduated before they implemented this or aren’t American, the system they started to use to teach kids how to read is called three cuing. They teach kids to identify unknown words by guessing based on clues in pictures with the sentences, what word would ‘make sense’, and whether the answer they came up with looks right based on the first letter.
As you may have noticed, none of that is reading a word. These are strategies that borderline illiterate people will use to try to understand words, and for decades it’s been the method used by many schools across the country.
So that person you’re arguing with online who keeps going off on bizarre rants barely related to anything you said might not be a troll, they might just be functionally illiterate due to having never been taught to read. Yaaay!
That sounds like a problem with reading comprehension rather than phonics. Critical thinking skills are in short supply nowadays.
The problem with three-cuing is that it teaches people to skip words they don’t know. Having people just not read half the words in comments they are replying to explains so much. No wonder people have bad reading comprehension.
I skip words because I have attention deficit problems.
You skip words because you can’t read.
We are not the same.
I learned phonics (which is essential) but also ended up self-teaching myself visual reading. Unless there’s an unfamiliar word or unusual sentence structure I usually don’t subvocalize or “hear” what I’m reading. When I was younger teachers would be upset because I typically finished reading the novel they assigned in the first or second in class “reading time”.
So there is absolutely significant value in visual reading, skimming, cueing, etc – but skipping phonics is insane. It’s like teaching someone how to run before they can walk. It also ignores not everyone is great at running and leaves those people especially screwed.
I usually intuitively understand slovene text when reading it. It just makes reading books more boring - so I read more English books (well I can also do it with English text, but not as good).
It also infuriates some people I read to - since I just skim trough the boring parts, which then sound like groups of random letters.