The one supposedly unanswerable argument put out by "whole word"
advocates, is that their method gives children access to "real" books right
from the start - as compared with mundane, simple, "readers" of the phonic
system.
I opened book #1 ("A Fat Cat") of first ten volumes of the Fitzroy
(phonic) system, and yes, it is simple, but has succeeded in being
entertaining also. It's about a cat, a rat, and a bat; introduced one by
one - with the final achievement of "A rat on a bat on a cat in a hat on a
mat." All illustrated. You will notice that only a few alphabet letters
are introduced, that words don't exceed three letters. Boring? Not
necessarily. I vaguely remember my own experience with such a Reader - I
felt empowered; I could read! Better this, than being confronted with
complicated words, which can only be remembered by constant repetition in
the book - which, as Rudolf Flesch points out - need even MORE repetition
(as memory is by sight of whole words) than does the Fitzroy reader just
quoted - where children learn to "sound out" a word: memorising and
recognising each word by letter-scanning; left to right. As Flesch says,
adults do the same thing when reading, but constant practice means we do it
at high speed.
Paul Jennings is a writer who apparently advocates the "whole word"
method, and his book "The Reading Bug" is a useful exposition. He has
recently published four "proper books", not "readers", about a dragon called
Rascal (I've managed to get two). These books are for parents to read to
their four or five year olds ("Education Age"; 7/6) - but also for kids to
try and read back to their parents. Personally, I'd not recommend the
latter, for, even if "close enough" is good enough, the effect on children
(in my opinion) is not empowerment, but bewilderment. Also, reading is then
"guessing", or a case of "she'll be right, mate".
"Readers" don't have to be boring, and I certainly didn't find them so when
in primary school. It didn't put me off reading, as I used to borrow books
from the local public library at age 7 or 8, going alone on the "tramways
bus" to do so. What is a good teacher? One who can put him/herself in the
place of the pupil, and see things from such child's perspective.

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