When I volunteer for the Adult Literacy League, training new tutors, one of the things we discuss is how people learning to read must be able to decode the markings on the page into meaningful words, sentences, and paragraphs. There are many ways we do this.
What does a reader do when confronted with a word he doesn't recognize?
We use our phonics skills, but they don't always work, since the English language is rooted in too many other languages that don't comply to those "rules." They work much of the time, however, so the ALL recommends using a phonics based approach as a basic starting point.
Another tool: In our training sessions we talk about Word Patterns, or Word Families, which might also draw on phonics skills. Can you compare the word to another that you already know? For example, if the student can't read the word "Shake", but can read "cake" and "bake", the tutor can use this as a way to help the reader recognize that "ake" makes a specific sound, and from there, can extrapolate how to form other words that end in "ake."
Of course, it won't always work. My favorite example is laughter. Change the "l" to a "d" and the words sound nothing alike. (Unless you're in my family, in which we've been know to refer to our dafters.)
