how important is phonics to determining if a child is reading? I get the sense DS is picking up sight words and reading words he recognizes in novel situations at times, but I can not tell if he is phonetically sounding words out or just recognizing them by sight.
I definitely never learned to read phonetically (and I think of languages like Chinese, which has absolutely no phonetic basis, and yet kids can start learning to read Chinese at the same age as English, which really makes me question all the emphasis on a child must having solid phonics background to be considered a reader)
