HelloBaby I am also curious what you think of the whole word debate. I tried to check on google scholar what non alphabetic languages do for reading.. did not find anything of as yet. DD reads by whole word and is repulsed by phonics. She has well over 100 "sight" words and she picks them up or is showing them to us daily. She is obsessed with Dick and Jane and loves that there is a little girl Sally that is around her age in the books. I do think she may have used a bit of phonics when she was deciphering the difference between there and here. She knows all the sounds the letters makes but does not hear the word when she puts them together. I am one of the whole language readers and was never taught phonics and though I wish I knew it for sounding out words in those few times of reading publicly, I am not sure that I am missing much. I do think DD will get enough of it when she starts school and so I am considering her reading even though she is not doing it the phonics way.
