Whole Language is a pedagogical philosophy that emphasizes a meaning-based approach to reading and writing, allowing children to acquire skills naturally. It focuses on constructing and deciphering the meaning of a text, rather than phonetic principles. Critics argue that it forces students to memorize all the words and lacks scientific research.
The Whole Language is a pedagogical philosophy that emphasizes a meaning-based approach to reading and writing. This philosophy grew out of published research by American linguist Kenneth S. Goodman starting in the 1960s, who argued that children should be allowed to acquire reading and writing skills in the same way they naturally acquire speaking skills. . Teachers who put he principles into practice will gravitate towards getting children involved in the meaning of a text, rather than simply teaching them to read it.
Goodman’s theories build on previous psycholinguistic research which indicated that children learn to use language by listening to it and gradually begin to understand its relationship to the world around them. Language acquisition in early childhood is not about practicing the meanings of individual words. Similarly, according to whole-language theorists, children will learn to read and write better when exposed to the relationship between text and their lives, rather than being trained in the mechanics of reading and writing.
There is no established methodological approach to the whole of language instruction, but in general it will focus less on phonetic principles and reading single words than on constructing and deciphering the meaning of a text. One whole language strategy for teaching reading is to have students look at the words of a story as the teacher reads them aloud. Through repetition, students will begin to recognize the written form of the word and associate it with its meaning in the context of the story. This is known as whole-word or lexical learning, as opposed to sub-lexical learning, which focuses on smaller parts of words, such as letters or phonemes. Proponents of this strategy say it’s more likely to engage children’s imaginations than start reading artificially simplified basic texts, because it helps them develop positive associations with reading.
This learning style is sometimes set against phonetics, but this contrast is not entirely accurate since whole-language advocates do not do away with phonetic instruction altogether. Teachers could insert short phonics lessons in the context of a larger language lesson. However, they typically will not devote as much time to phonics as followers of other educational theories.
Learning to read words in a broader context also takes into account Goodman’s theory that reading is a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” A fluent reader does not read by breaking down individual sounds into words or even mentally pronouncing all the words. Rather, he makes educated guesses about what the text will say as it is read and corrects those assumptions as needed. According to advocates of whole language, children are able to skip the step of purely phonetic reading and switch to a meaning-based approach as fluent adult readers do.
Although it is a popular pedagogical philosophy, the whole theory of language has many critics. Some of these argue that while they try to avoid forcing students to memorize phonetic rules, teachers of whole languages are actually forcing students to memorize all the words of the language. Others argue that not enough scientific research has been done to verify its effectiveness.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
