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Concept
Whole language
Summary
Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.
Whole-language approaches to reading instruction are typically contrasted with phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing. Phonics-based methods emphasize instruction for decoding and spelling. Whole-language practitioners disagree with that view and instead focus on teaching meaning and making students read more. The scientific consensus is that whole-language-based methods of reading instruction (e.g., teaching children to use context cues to guess the meaning of a printed word) are not as effective as phonics-based approaches.
Whole language is an educational philosophy that is complex to describe, particularly because it is informed by multiple research fields, including but not limited to education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology (see also Language Experience Approach). It can be viewed as being founded on the educational philosophy of John Amos Comenius in the early 17th century. Yetta Goodman has also cited the contributions of Dewey, Vygotsky, Rosenblatt, and Ashton Warner, among other writers, in the development of the whole language movement. One description of whole language is "a concept that embodies both a philosophy of language development as well as the instructional approaches embedded within, and supportive of that philosophy".
Several strands run through descriptions of whole language.
Official source
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