I know from my earliest memories that reading is possible from whole words if you are read to enough without being formally taught. Granted at that point my attention span was too lacking to really read books by myself, compared to being read to.
But that basically amounts to probably just learning phonics indirectly through examples and drawing patterns, and specifically is an exception and not the norm. And children's books even if they don't use the phonetic alphabet teach through example when read properly.
I don't know enough about whole language learning theory and its development aside from the fact that it has been discredited. Perhaps it was based off of the outliers and wrongly assuming that the higher end of the early literacy bell curve's techniques would be generally applicable?
But that basically amounts to probably just learning phonics indirectly through examples and drawing patterns, and specifically is an exception and not the norm. And children's books even if they don't use the phonetic alphabet teach through example when read properly.
I don't know enough about whole language learning theory and its development aside from the fact that it has been discredited. Perhaps it was based off of the outliers and wrongly assuming that the higher end of the early literacy bell curve's techniques would be generally applicable?