Why phonics is so important for Thai students?

Phonics is the current ”hot topic.” Everyone is talking about phonics, and everyone has opinion about what should be taught, when and how. Phonics is an important part of beginning literacy instruction. Decades of research support the idea that children need phonics but that children who are taught phonics only until they “get it ” don’t suddenly get transformed into eager, meaning-seeking, strategic readers(Cunningham, 1995). In my opinion, good readers do know phonics and they use phonics to figure out some words. But good readers also recognize the most frequent words instantly as sight words and they use context or article to check that what they are reading and the words they have figured out make sense.