What is a primary benefit of teaching sight words?

Teaching sight words primarily benefits students by enabling them to recognize high-frequency words automatically. Sight words often make up a significant portion of written text, and when students can quickly identify these words without needing to sound them out, it enhances their reading fluency. This automatic recognition contributes to smoother reading and comprehension, allowing students to focus on understanding the meaning of the text rather than getting bogged down by decoding each word. This skill is particularly important in early literacy development, as it sets the foundation for more advanced reading strategies and comprehension skills as students progress in their education.

The other choices highlight important aspects of literacy development but do not capture the main advantage of sight word instruction as directly as the ability to recognize high-frequency words automatically. For instance, while expanding vocabulary is important, sight words are typically selected based on their frequency and utility in reading rather than their richness or varied meanings. Similarly, fostering creative writing skills and improving spelling accuracy are valuable but are not the primary focus of sight word instruction.