> fully recognising each character individually.

> comprehending individual characters / words,

Weirdly enough, the elementary school here does taught both at same time. We have article reading in the test. Which don't really ask you recognize the characters down to the stroke. We also have "改錯字". Which roughly means "find the typo", but with a bit difference. The teacher may alter the character itself (add a stroke or remove a stroke) instead of replace it by some other characters. So you need to know how "exactly" should the character look like to pass the test.