"Whole word" "vs." "phonics." Both, of course, are necessary, with the
emphasis on phonics, since it gives you 87% (whence the figure?) of the
language and 100% of the uncommon vocabulary.
[NB] Somewhere along the line, homophones became utterly and totally
neglected. Phonics, as a practical matter, apparently pays no attention to
homophones at all. I'd add a 0% to Peter's statistics. Apparently, the
process goes "text to phonetic form, keep in memory as phonetic, and
later, phonetic form back to text".
I recently discovered that there are several homophone checkers for
computer text preparation.
Indeed, I just re-read "both...are necessary", and I never dismiss Peter's
comments casually.
But, then, why was I so lucky, when I had no whole-word training at all?
<risk mode>
At the risk of seeming conceited, I think it's interesting to tell that on
a few occasions I have opened to a new page of text with few or no
graphics, and within a second, spotted a typo/misspelling. It seems like
some sort of ESP, not that I'm an ESP nut, but not a deny-er (denyer?
denyër?) , either.
</risk mode>
Spelling challenge, for electronic technicians and others -- Spell
correctly:
Te[]troni[], famous oscilloscope and TV studio equipment maker
Harm[]n []ard[]n, famous maker of home audio equipment
Litt[]fu[]e, well-known maker of small electrical fuses
For upstate New York residents, spell the name of Ren[]s[]l[]r County.
(It's Dutch.)
Btw, I suspect that long names, such as Fianarantsoa, are likely to be
spelled correctly, because almost everybody has to slow down and be
careful with them! Nevertheless, Haroutunian became corrupted to
Hadoutvnhal. (Too lazy for double quotes. Should eat breakfast.)
--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
ESP: Had a Theosophist father; he was born Russian Orthodox Xian, family
name Bessaraboff. (Bodley was my mother's maiden name.)
Cold war, Sen. McCarthy, subliterate Americans were all factors.
Opera 7.5 (Build 3778), using M2