Why use sight words?

It is important to use sight words for many reasons, mainly because most children have working knowledge of these words already, they use them in their daily speech, and they hear them often. For many of these words, the meanings won’t have to be taught as the children inherently know what they mean. Thus sight words are used to teach reading since the words are used in about 50-75% of the reading materials for that particular age range. It is of the opinion that readers who master these words are more apt to become accurate, fluent, confident, and successful readers.