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Notes -
It's certainly better for readers, but I'm not sure that translates to "better way to learn to read". Learning how to sound letters out is easier than memorising every word in full, and thus lets you make progress on your own without having to be told, or remember, every word every time. Sure it'll be slow, but you'll pick up the full words from experience, and be able to practice that on your own. Bootstrapping with the tools to teach yourself to read seems a strong strategy in learning to read, rather than trying to skip to the finish line.
Yeah - I have the same issue: I can't really remember a time before I could read, and so don't really have personal knowledge of what was actually effective. Save that yeah, my parents reading to and with me was probably a part of it. I'm pretty sure I started with the "sounding out" approach though: being able to read quickly a word at a time came from practice - letting me skip that more often as more words became familiar, not a different approach from the outset.
The converse applies too though: it's too foundational a skill for schools to trust that parents will have done it: it's vitally important that they ensure the kids who lacked such parents learn to do it too. And so I think it does become pretty important as to how they teach that if what they're using doesn't achieve that goal.
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