Dolch Words: How Dummies Teach Reading
you might be able to do it. But no ordinary child could. And 1,000 is still only the BEGINNING. Basic literacy in English requires that you know at least 5,000 to 10,000 words.
Do you have some sense now of how hopeless this project is? Even if you could memorize a few hundred names per year, you would still be illiterate all the way through high school.
Meanwhile, children who learn Phonics can read real books in the second and third grades. Phonics is basically a big bag of mnemonic devices to help you recognize what you are looking at. To put it in the terms of our thought experiment, it’s as if our photographs have initials in the corner or nicknames or post-it notes. The memory needs all the help it can get.
Whole Word is impractical because it relies 100% on information you can retain indefinitely in your brain. You are always
