Some other scary screenshots!
I think that this is a runner up for the scariest section:
This last one comes pretty early. But I think this should get the medal of being the scariest. It's short. It's simple. It's like the poison dart frog you see on a leaf. Which is why I am only showing it know.
I think you needed to marinate a bit, but also I think it's a great jumpscare to realise that this was in roughly the first third. This was not some type of final, terrible secret only found when wading deep. They will readily admit this, no not only that, this is part of the sales pitch!!!
You read (or heard) it folks! Actually knowing the text through reading is over, bye bye!
But to be more serious here. You will, as a human being, inevitably come across many topics that you may not be familiar with. Now, a cute romance book or light reading novels might not be very complex and therefore not have too many issues cropping up due to you not understanding something.
However, daily live, vital parts of it, are constantly made up of complex topics. Imagine, your whole basis on understanding text hinges on trying to equate this new word with an old word. The example of pony into horse has it's issues already, but if you are currently reading only for fun, this is not world ending.
This comes to it's disasterous end when you:
Have to navigate legal documents.
Have to navigate forms for various important things like job applications or higher education.
Navigating medical topics.
Medicine is already a difficult thing. In german one of the popular dictionary brands called Duden has a whole dictionary specific to medical terms, word structure (pre- and suffixes and more) and even abbreviations. This is because medicine is not only a highly complex topic, but also because a lot of the words have direct latin or english roots. This makes something like Three-cueing very difficult.
Many new words, but they are completly alien. Aortic dissection? Thrombosis? Diabetes? What can you possibly find with the same inital that would fit the meaning of these words?
The way this method is decribed does not sound to me like a competent and confident native speaker. As someone who accompanied many immigrants to medical stuff "as a family friend" for translating the german speaking staff, this sounds like when they have just learned the very basic first things on the language and are trying desperatly to understand by themselves what a doctor, nurse or pharmacist is saying.
Similarly, this first impulse to find an equivalent or similar word being trained into you is terrible. It should be you trying to understand the word based on words and structures and phonics you know. And if this fails it should be to ask the person in front of you in the clinic waiting for you to read the sheet that tells you of the risk of anesthesia. It should be looking up and learning new words. It should be asking for someone to say a sentence out loud for you. It should be that you get help if you need it.
Not to simply guess, skip and hide the lack of understanding and avoid all texts.
This instinct is very similar to a behaviour common with people that are (functionally) illiterate. Due to the largely existing disdain against people like this and the ridicule everyone offers if not being able to do a supposedly easy/basic thing quickly turns into hiding the illiteracy by attempting to make out some words, listening closly to what the other person said additionally and repeating it back, or simply nodding along. And most importantly: never asking. This draws attention. It would mean that their secret is revealed. There are a lot more people who are functionally illiterate than you belive. They normally hide. But they are affected by it daily.
This turns into people going for decades not being able to properly read, driven by shame. This is very destructive to their lives. Any text is a foreign thing, never to be understood. Forms, books, notes and writing become almost to completely insurmountable obstacles, driving the avoidance even further. Not going to the doctor's office because you won't understand the notes they give you and the forms you need to fill. Not being able to properly navigate a new place by reading street signs. Not being able to get a drivers license.
The only way out is getting the oppertunity and accepting it. This is very difficult, especially if the illiteracy has been present for decades. Behaviour has been driven in, like not asking for help or clarification, since this could expose you as not being able to understand what is written. Other factors like not having gone to school, poverty, working in jobs where this is never apparent (making hiding seem easier for the person than attempting to try and find a way out), living in very isolated conditions, isolation in general and bad experiences when asking for help only add to this.
A child learning to read should never be taught these behaviours. A child that is taught this will have difficulty later on due to self reinforcing behaviour. They will not ask for clarification, not understand something like an assignment, try to wing it based on what they think the assignment says, hide this and not consider asking questions, fail, will get scolded or the bad result alone is enough to trigger shame, this shame will make it even less likely that they ask for help now or later, etc.
This is a spiral that can, unless they break out of it themselves or are lucky to get someone who recognises this and helps them (and they accept), only go downwards.
You should not basically set a child on it as if it was a rollercoaster.
The people making millions of profits off of school districts buying their bullshit should be completley exposed as profiting off something increadibly vital to life as we live it and be barred from selling or even being seen as a proper source. Actual scientific validity of what is taught to teachers should be questioned a lot more.
This happens because the people who can directly intervene are completly clueless. Meanwhile the people who believe they are right against all evidence can just live in their la-la-land, completly unaffected.
This should not be happening.
