What is "whole language"

[Ellen]

In conversations about reading, I see misunderstandings about what "whole language" means. My understanding of this comes from my teacher training, but since I never taught young kids, I may be missing some pieces--so please correct me if I'm off here. Here is what I understand about the idea of "whole language" instruction.

Think about how children learn spoken language. We don't start by giving our babies lessons in grammar and parts of speech. We let them hear and experiment with language in a natural environment, and they eventually figure out how to speak in grammatically correct sentences. They end up with a very sophisticated intuitive knowledge of grammatical rules, without ever being taught. The same thing works with learning a second language. Full immersion has been shown to be the best way to learn, especially for young children. Let them hear the language spoken and try it in natural contexts with native speakers, and they'll eventually learn it.

Learning to read can happen in a similar way. Through frequent and natural exposure to books and words, kids can figure out how to decode words and make sense of what they read, the same way they learned how to speak. "Whole language" means you immerse them in the experience of reading and don't worry about teaching every discreet skill in isolation.

Whole language is not synonymous with "whole word" recognition, memorizing sight words, and it doesn't necessarily exclude phonics. A whole language approach trusts that kids can recognize the phonetic patterns in words and intuit the rules without needing to have every rule explicitly taught. It recognizes that reading is a complex process that brings together a variety of skills, but like learning to speak, those skills can come together without a lot of explicit teaching.

Thoughts?

[mokamoto]

[Mama Rophe]

I think I know what you are talking about. I don't feel qualified to answer though. So I will sit back with my for now.

[knitlove]

[AngelaVA]

Originally Posted by Ellen

I "Whole language" means you immerse them in the experience of reading and don't worry about teaching every discreet skill in isolation.

Whole language is not synonymous with "whole word" recognition, memorizing sight words, and it doesn't necessarily exclude phonics. A whole language approach trusts that kids can recognize the phonetic patterns in words and intuit the rules without needing to have every rule explicitly taught. It recognizes that reading is a complex process that brings together a variety of skills, but like learning to speak, those skills can come together without a lot of explicit teaching.

Thoughts?

This is exactly what it means, yes. Some people will categorize every non phonics only method as "whole language" but that's not really accurate. Balanced Literacy is another term which means you teach skills as you see appropriate within a whole language setting, often using short targeted lessons when you see a child struggling with a concept or skill. A lot of times balanced literacy involves really carefully selected books targeted for a child's level of learning along with guided reading of them whereas whole language doesn't necessarily provide for those really easy books to bridge the gap between readers and non readers.

If you are interested in the subject of teaching reading, how children learn to read and how we support them I would suggest reading some of the essays by Marie Clay. By Different Paths to Common Outcomes is said to be a good one written in less clinical terms.

[jtidwell]

I'm not a reading teacher, just an interested parent. So I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

Wouldn't it help kids to actually learn some of the rules explicitly, rather than being left to guess them (and guess wrong, sometimes)?

Also, to bring in an idea from that other thread... is whole language or balanced literacy where kids are taught to look at the pictures, or use other context, to guess what an unknown word must be? Instead of reading the actual word? Because that seems kind of wacky to me -- it sounds like a coping strategy, not a sound reading habit.

[Quiteria]

Originally Posted by Ellen

They end up with a very sophisticated intuitive knowledge of grammatical rules, without ever being taught. The same thing works with learning a second language. Full immersion has been shown to be the best way to learn, especially for young children. Let them hear the language spoken and try it in natural contexts with native speakers, and they'll eventually learn it.

Interestingly, I am right in the middle of the first and second language acquisition chapter of my TESOL textbook, and this is not quite true. Close, but let me refine this a bit according to my textbook--

In first language acquisition, we *do* explicitly teach toddlers and preschoolers grammatical rules by correcting them and "scaffolding" their conversation. They say something cute and incorrect, and we tend to reply back with either an explicit correction, or an elaboration of what they said in a more grammatically correct format, often followed by a question designed to elicit even more language. For example:

"I goed grammy's house."

"Yesterday, you went to grandma's house. That's right. Where do you want to go today?"

"Park."

"You want to go to the park. Sure. We went there last week. Remember? What do you want to do while we're there?"

Notice the right verb tense, the use of the preposition "to", adult questions to keep the conversation going, etc. Sometimes it's more explict, sometimes it's more natural, but overall, there are patterns to be found in which we do take part in teachng our children the rules.

For second language, many grammatical structures are acquired naturally in the same order that youngsters acquire English...using -s for plural occurs sooner than -s for possessives and -s on third person singular present tense verbs. These can be learned from immersion, and appear in the same order as they do in first language acquisition. HOWEVER, research shows that some grammatical structures do appear to need explicit teaching to be acquired by second language learners of English. They really do remain persistent errors despite immersion until addressed.

My guess is that the same thing happens with whole language instruction versus balanced literacy...a great deal is learned intuitively, but some things do need to be taught, even for native speakers of English.

For the record, actual communication has been found more effective in second language learning than drilling the grammar in isolation. But, IMO, we do need to structure learning a little bit...actually talk about writing choices and reading dilemmas--about how commas help, about how some words are unclear, about how to sound out a long word syllable by syllable. Maybe this happens best in the context of a whole language environment, and we don't need to isolate every little skill...but at some point, we do need to think metacognatively about language, actually discuss how we read and write in order to pass along full competence.

[Ellen]

Thanks, Quilteria. Those are important clarifications. This is all stuff I've learned but sort of forgotten .

---------- Post added at 03:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:59 AM ----------

By the way, my point in this thread isn't to defend whole language or say what approach is best; I just wanted to clarify what whole language means. I think the term tends to be misapplied as a label for any method or strategy that isn't based in phonics.

Jtidwell, I think that using context clues like pictures is one strategy that would be encouraged in a whole-language approach, but not to the exclusion of other strategies. Think about it: even though you are proficient at sounding out words, you still sometimes encounter words that you are not sure how to pronounce or what they mean. That's where context can help.

[Rabbit]

Originally Posted by jtidwell

I'm not a reading teacher, just an interested parent. So I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

Wouldn't it help kids to actually learn some of the rules explicitly, rather than being left to guess them (and guess wrong, sometimes)?

Also, to bring in an idea from that other thread... is whole language or balanced literacy where kids are taught to look at the pictures, or use other context, to guess what an unknown word must be? Instead of reading the actual word? Because that seems kind of wacky to me -- it sounds like a coping strategy, not a sound reading habit.

It's more than just sound reading. It's essential. Absolutely essential.

Yes, some students can try to use it as a crutch during their learning process, but the final goal is a fluent reader who reads without a teacher at his elbow. Being able to use context clues is -essential- for efficient reading and comprehension.

For one, as fully educated adult, you are going to find words in your daily life that you've never read before, that fit no phonics rules, that may not even be English, and you're going to need at least a rough idea of what they mean. And it's not efficient to have to research it every time that happens.

Real life example: I knew what "KWIM?" meant, and how to use it in a sentence, long before I ever learned what the letters meant. Not because I stopped everything I was doing to look it up. Not because I sounded it out. Because I figured it out from the context of the post.

Taking in the whole context, including any provided pictures, is also essential to learning. Your brain functions with a massive web of an index. You can't learn anything without keying it into the index. Otherwise, it's lost, like a file that's slipped down into the bottom of a full drawer. The more "linked in" to the index a new piece of knowledge is, the "smarter" your brain is, because you can find necessary information faster and more reliably this way.

So if you experience the text you're reading by accessing as much of your current index as possible, and linking this new into as much as possible of the old, you'll understand your reading better. As the brain uses all five senses and emotion as information, the more you take in with the words you're reading, the more meaningful it will be. You begin, as a young student, to learn about this process by using the full context of a word to understand just that one single word.

So while a student can try to use it as a crutch, it's like trying to strip the gear shift out of a car because the new driver tried to go too fast. You need all your gears, and you'll have to learn to use them all correctly.

There is so much more to fluent reading than just sounding out words. All of it needs teaching.

[Quiteria]

I'm really glad you posted this, because I have noticed the same thing with frustration...that people keep talking about whole language to mean "sight words." I can see where a whole language approach might lead to predominantly sight word recognition, if one never ever talks about phonics while learning to read, if one sets up a whole language approach to be the polar opposite of a phonics skill and drill approach. I like the concept of a balanced approach, and I'm glad an official term exists for it now.

I have read that very early readers (before the advent of Teach Your Baby to Read, lol) tend to learn on their own from a whole language approach...you read to your toddler all the time, and suddenly your three-year-old is surprising you by sounding out bedtime stories and signs long before you ever thought to teach your child any explicit phonics rules. I learned to read that way, and I would hazard a guess that not all the words I read were sight words...I probably didn't sound out every new word correctly, but I knew enough of the basic letter sounds from having seen them read to me. So, I guess one would say that I learned to read naturally from whole language exposure. But, I exposed my daughter to daily books at a young age, maybe even more than my mom had done for me, and it still didn't click for her until the end of first grade, after quite a bit of phonics, with some gaps that still needed to be corrected by even more explicit phonics. (She does use context clues, too...in fact, she tends to skip over words a little too much, guessing from the first letter without bothering to skim over the middle letters, hence the targeted phonics instruction to help her realize that maybe one should sound out the words on occasion...or at least should make sure that what one guesses matches the sound of the letters that are there.) When I hear errors in a real life situation, like reading a menu or taking turns reading a bedtime story together, I can correct and explain in much the same way we stop and notice our toddler's speech errors...but IMO even that valuable bit of explanation in context may still need to be reinforced by targeted practice if we don't come across that same type of spelling frequently enough to talk about often enough for it to be retained.

[jtidwell]

Okay, so, I totally buy what you're saying, Natalie. It's in line with everything I've learned about cognitive science and development.

When I posted that, I was thinking about a YouTube video I saw recently where a child read part of a picture book, and every time she had trouble, she was encouraged to look at the picture and guess. She wasn't encouraged AT ALL to sound out the word in question. In fact, it seemed like the facilitating adult was getting her to try every strategy EXCEPT sounding out the word. It seemed backwards to me, and counter to what we should be doing when we teach reading. The letters on the page are central to the problem. Context is important too, of course, but it has to work together with the information in the word, not instead of it. KWIM?

I think what I saw in that video wasn't representative of Whole Language. I'll keep that in mind as I build my own schema of what WL actually is!

[Quiteria]

(Someday I'd love to chat more with you, Rene. Someday, I'd love to chat with you and just absorb some of what you learned in your experience, because I think a lot of my students overlap with yours. )

[AngelaVA]

Originally Posted by Rabbit

Taking in the whole context, including any provided pictures, is also essential to learning. Your brain functions with a massive web of an index. You can't learn anything without keying it into the index. Otherwise, it's lost, like a file that's slipped down into the bottom of a full drawer. The more "linked in" to the index a new piece of knowledge is, the "smarter" your brain is, because you can find necessary information faster and more reliably this way.

So if you experience the text you're reading by accessing as much of your current index as possible, and linking this new into as much as possible of the old, you'll understand your reading better. As the brain uses all five senses and emotion as information, the more you take in with the words you're reading, the more meaningful it will be. You begin, as a young student, to learn about this process by using the full context of a word to understand just that one single word.

This exactly! I think sometimes when we think that the only way to learn to read has to be "systematic" we are confusing what makes sense to the teacher with what makes sense to the child. In order to learn something, you have to be able to make sense of it and connect it to something you already know and you have to have it repeatedly reinforced in meaningful context. Language is really not all that systematic. They are some rules yes, but the exceptions are endless. You can have a great system set up of teaching CVC words and then CVCe words and then blends and dipthongs etc that might look great to you but if it is not connected or meaningful to the child, you are sunk.

[jtidwell]

Originally Posted by AngelaVA

This exactly! I think sometimes when we think that the only way to learn to read has to be "systematic" we are confusing what makes sense to the teacher with what makes sense to the child. In order to learn something, you have to be able to make sense of it and connect it to something you already know and you have to have it repeatedly reinforced in meaningful context. Language is really not all that systematic. They are some rules yes, but the exceptions are endless. You can have a great system set up of teaching CVC words and then CVCe words and then blends and dipthongs etc that might look great to you but if it is not connected or meaningful to the child, you are sunk.

Unless your child is like mine, and enjoys decoding words for their own sake.

He can sustain interest for a good long time if a book's text is meaningful to him, but he'll happily read novel words out of context too. I think he likes solving the pronunciation and meaning problems that words present to him, just because. (I have a feeling he's going to be a mathy sort of kid, when he gets old enough to understand math...)

[teamommy]

This is what I understood "whole language" to mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
I welcome comments as to the accuracy.

I had thought "balanced literacy" was the same thing, but according to wiki, it involves more explicit phonics instruction as a reaction to the national reading panel findings. And from this thread I learned there may be some differences in the reading material selected.

I am guessing this thread is partially sparked by some of my other posts. I know I have equated whole language with sight words + reading strategies. I understood that it was about "finding meaning", "understanding print", and not the same as Dick and Jane/look-say. I understood there is some small amount of phonics involved. My comment may have oversimplified it. Still, even reading all the comments about reading for meaning, context, etc. (have heard it before) and for the kids that don't intuit the phonics the way it is presumed they will, there will be a lot of sight memorization and guessing going on, won't there?

I'm not a teacher or a reading specialist, but, on a homeschooling board, I don't think that matters. I think teachers have a certain bias due to the way most teaching colleges teach. The same way medical professionals have bias due to the way they study and are trained, likewise those in any other field. People can be experts and be respected as such and we can still disagree with some presuppositions and conclusions.

I also wonder if the "whole language", "pure phonics", and "balanced literacy" labels can even exist when we are talking about homeschooling.
When I read:

In order to learn something, you have to be able to make sense of it and connect it to something you already know and you have to have it repeatedly reinforced in meaningful context.

or

Taking in the whole context, including any provided pictures, is also essential to learning. Your brain functions with a massive web of an index. You can't learn anything without keying it into the index. Otherwise, it's lost, like a file that's slipped down into the bottom of a full drawer. The more "linked in" to the index a new piece of knowledge is, the "smarter" your brain is, because you can find necessary information faster and more reliably this way. ********

There is so much more to fluent reading than just sounding out words. All of it needs teaching.

I am left and I think it is because I feel these things you all are talking about ARE the intuitive things, and yes, for kids growing up in literate homes. I would never dream of specifically teaching these things. I think most children in literate homes that are read to a lot are going to understand the ideas about content and print meaning very early, so I wonder if even talking about whole language in the context of homeschooling is even useful. At home, these factors may be there, but perhaps they are more environmental. I'm going to assume many homeschooled children come from a home that is part of the top 10-15% from this chart http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/kf_demographics.asp , the homes with high literary proficiency. (BTW, how sad is that chart ).
In my world, it is a GIVEN that the children are read to from real books and will be reading real books as soon as possible, not boring readers with controlled vocabulary (non-phonics based approaches still use vocab-controlled readers, too), and that they understand words have meaning so there is no need to teach these things, but I think I understand a little better what some of you are saying about why they must be taught in a classroom.

When I posted that, I was thinking about a YouTube video I saw recently where a child read part of a picture book, and every time she had trouble, she was encouraged to look at the picture and guess. She wasn't encouraged AT ALL to sound out the word in question. In fact, it seemed like the facilitating adult was getting her to try every strategy EXCEPT sounding out the word. It seemed backwards to me, and counter to what we should be doing when we teach reading. The letters on the page are central to the problem. Context is important too, of course, but it has to work together with the information in the word, not instead of it.

(sorry I don't know how to multi quote with names)

I have spent some time (nak late at night) looking at things on youtube and other websites, and have seen quite a few videos in the past with teachers demonstrating things they would do in the classroom and to do at home, and have come away with the same impression. Another example of both the good and bad of the internet, informative but sometimes only providing a snippet of the whole program. Still did not like what I saw, though.