Thanks for correcting, I'm not sure how I arrived at that point—it seems to me I too recognize word at a time. However, I'm not a visual reader as I understand the term: unless I consciously attempt to suppress my inner speech, I silently “pronounce” each word, which slows down the process.

I'm trying to imagine using a writing system in which how a word is written has no connection to its pronunciation, representing only meaning. That would pretty much make inner speech impossible, among other things.