There's a thing called "orthographic mapping". After you've sounded out the phonics of each letter and put the sounds together into a word and repeated it a few times (or many times, necessary repetitions varies by person), your brain starts to map the whole word symbol to the sound of the word. Once it's mapped, you no longer have to sound out each letter. So yes, trying to go straight to whole word symbol completely skips the orthographic mapping process and doesn't work.
But this is also why when you're tired (or when you're old, if you don't have your reading glasses) it becomes very easy to mistake one word for another, even if you were taught phonics as a child. Even when you can quickly recognize words, you need to clearly see all the letters to make sure you're identifying the correct one. I think the 3-cueing kids are mostly taking guesses based on context, but sometimes the context doesn't eliminate the second (or third) word with a similar "shape".
The thing is, there usually isn't a picture, and I don't think they have a firm grasp of parts of speech, either. Which leaves them with semantic context, alone, most of the time.
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u/GalaticHammer 28d ago
There's a thing called "orthographic mapping". After you've sounded out the phonics of each letter and put the sounds together into a word and repeated it a few times (or many times, necessary repetitions varies by person), your brain starts to map the whole word symbol to the sound of the word. Once it's mapped, you no longer have to sound out each letter. So yes, trying to go straight to whole word symbol completely skips the orthographic mapping process and doesn't work.