Probably both. I think kana helps you process the words as sequences of "syllables" instead of characters. At least it did for me. I suppose that English speake

Probably both. I think kana helps you process the words as sequences of "syllables" instead of characters. At least it did for me. I suppose that English speakers would get even more benefits because English pronunciation is often very far from how a word is written and sometimes doesn't make much sense.