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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 the UK 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. Overview 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. These include: focus on making meaning in reading and expressing meaning in writing; constructivist approaches to knowledge creation, emphasizing students' interpretations of texts and free expression of ideas in writing (often through daily journal entries); emphasis on high-quality and culturally diverse literature; integrating literacy into other areas of the curriculum, especially math, science, and social studies; frequent reading; with students in small guided reading groups to students with read-alouds by students independently; reading and writing for real purposes; focus on motivational aspects of literacy, emphasizing the love of books and engaging reading materials; meaning-centered whole– to part-to-whole instruction where phonics are taught contextually in embedded phonics (different from synthetic phonics or analytical phonics); emphasis on using and understanding the meaning-making role of phonics, grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in diverse social contexts. Attempts to empirically verify the benefits of whole language have repeatedly resulted in evidence that whole language is less effective than phonics-based reading instruction. Research psychologist Keith Stanovich has asserted, "The idea that learning to read is just like learning to speak is accepted by no responsible linguist, psychologist, or cognitive scientist in the research community", while in a systematic review of the reading research literature, Louisa Moats, a researcher on children's education, concluded that "Almost every premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has been contradicted by scientific investigations". Harvard professor Jeanne Chall surveyed the research on literacy and conducted her own classroom observations and found that the "code-emphasis method" (phonics) produces substantially better readers, not only in the mechanical aspects of reading but also in terms of reading for meaning and reading for enjoyment, contrary to the claims of whole-language theorists. Underlying premises Cognitive skills of reading Sub-lexical reading Sub-lexical reading involves teaching reading by associating characters or groups of characters with sounds or by using phonics learning and teaching methodology. Lexical reading Lexical reading involves acquiring words or phrases without attention to the characters or groups of characters that compose them or by using whole language learning and teaching methodology. Learning theory According to some, the idea of whole language has its basis in holism, the belief that a system should be viewed as a whole, not merely as a collection of parts. Simply put, this is "the theoretical basis for the term whole language". An important element for most teachers is also the principle that education and learning are driven by engagement, and engagement with reading is triggered through quality content. This dates back to the theories of John Amos Comenius, who first pushed for education to move away from dull rote learning. This also reflects a fundamental element of the concern voiced by many educators over the use of pure phonics and the positivist view that you can accurately measure the development of reading sub-skills. Ken Goodman's linguistic theory Gregory Shafer, a professor of English at Mott Community College, has claimed that "the seeds" of the whole language movement were "firmly rooted" in the theories of linguist Noam Chomsky. In 1967, Ken Goodman had an idea about reading that he considered similar to Chomsky's, and he wrote a widely cited article called "Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game". Goodman set out to determine whether the views of Chomsky could serve as psychological models of the reading process. He chided educators for attempting to apply what he saw as unnecessary orthographic order to a process that relied on holistic examination of words. Whether Goodman was indeed inspired by Chomsky, neither Chomsky himself nor his followers have ever accepted Goodman's views. Goodman thought that there are four "cueing systems" for reading, four things that readers have to guess what word comes next: graphophonemic: the shapes of the letters and the sounds that they evoke (see phonetics). semantic: what word one would expect to occur based on the meaning of the sentence so far (see semantics). syntactic: what part of speech or word would make sense based on the grammar of the language (see syntax). pragmatic: what is the function of the text The "graph" part of the word "graphophonemic" means the shape or symbol of the graphic input, i.e., the text. According to Goodman, these systems work together to help readers guess the right word. He emphasized that pronouncing individual words will involve the use of all three systems (letter clues, meaning clues from context, and syntactical structure of the sentence). The graphophonemic cues are related to the sounds we hear (the phonological system including individual letters and letter combinations), the letters of the alphabet, and the conventions of spelling, punctuation, and print. Studen.... Discover the Louisa Cook Moats popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Louisa Cook Moats books.