This post will present basic information about the whole language approach to reading instruction. More importantly, it will present information about how this philosophy of reading instruction is embedded into the scales used for assessment purposes and the instruction most ECE students receive on preliteracy instruction. It is my intention to help people in the ECE community to become knowledgeable about the various methods of reading instruction now used in this country.
What Is Whole Language
My post last weekend gave a brief history of the introduction of the whole language method of reading instruction in the mid 20th century. This post will deal more with the practicalities of the implementation of this method. In a nutshell, whole language instruction teaches children to memorize how a word looks. Sometimes it is coupled with learning the initial sounds of words, but children are taught to figure out words using various clues rather than decoding a word according to its sounds. These clues include using the illustrations for beginners. Later children are taught to use the context to try to decipher the word. All of these methods require the child to have some exposure to a word in order to be able to use it. A completely unfamiliar word must be taught in order to give the child enough exposure to understand it as a choice. Many people are familiar with "popcorn" words in kindergarten and first grade. Children are taught to recognize these words by sight to give them a repertoire of words to choose from when first beginning to read.
Sight Words
In all fairness, there are about 10% of words that must be learned by this method. Even systematic phonics reading instruction methods have sight words. Many of these words are of French or nonLatin based origin and do not follow the same rules as words that are Latin based. Names of colors, days, months, and even people also fall into this category sometimes. However 90% of our language can be decoded using basic phonics rules. The whole language method uses the method necessary for 10% of our language to read the other 90%.
The Problems with this Method
What are the problems associated with using the whole language method? I have already touched on one of them. A child must have exposure with a word either orally or in reading experiences in order to choose it as a possible option for the word they are trying to read. This is not the case when children are taught using systematic phonics. When decoding a word, a child will be able to read many words they have never heard before. As a teacher, you will simply need to give them a definition for the new word in order for them to proceed. Children using the whole language method are limited to their known language base. Another significant problem with the whole language method involves children who are not visual learners. Many times children are expected to memorize a word after only a few exposures. Visual learners have no trouble with this. Children that are not visual learners struggle. This is especially true when the children move beyond the point where illustrations can be used as a clue. This is why American children taught using the whole language method struggle so much with reading beyond the 3rd grade level.
Labeling
Now let us take this into the early childhood world. Many, many of the practices surrounding teaching preliteracy skills revolve around preparing the children for learning to read using the whole language method rather than the phonics method. Let me explain. We are taught to label everything in the classroom. Why are we told to do this? To give children the exposure to what these words look like as much as possible before they enter school. This is to give children that are not visual learners a head start on noticing the shapes of words and the letters in those words. However, I will tell you that the children this technique targets are not benefitted. Most of the time these children do not move beyond considering these labels as decorations before they enter school unless the teacher spends extensive time pointing out these words. The children that benefit from this technique are the visual learners. They will get a leg up on school readiness.
Pointing at Words as You Read
Another practice imposed on early childhood professionals that is meant to prepare children for the whole language method is pointing at words as you read a book to children. Again, this technique is meant to help the nonvisual learners gain exposure to what the words look like, and again it benefits the visual learners. Nonvisual learners need the sounds of language in order for those symbols on the page to make any sense. The phonics method of instruction helps nonvisual learners make sense of the symbols because they are attached to sounds. The children can grab onto the sounds first if need be, and then they process the symbols according to the sounds. Visual learners process phonics the opposite way. They take the symbols as their processing point, and then apply the sounds. Phonics is the only method that allows this dual processing. Whole language cannot be processed the opposite way.
Alliteration and Rhyming
I want to touch on two other preliteracy teaching techniques that actually can be used for both teaching methods. They are alliteration and rhyming. Alliteration involves teaching children to notice words that start with the same sound. Rhyming involves teaching children to notice words that end with the same sounds. These two activities help the auditory learners the most. Many visual learners will struggle with these two activities because they are sound based. However, if these two activities are used for the whole language process, the auditory learner will still run into the same problems I have outlined above. When these two activities are coupled with the phonics method, the auditory learner receives a leg up on school readiness. In case you did not know this, some children do not learn alliteration and rhyming until they learn to read. Some children that are very dominant visual learners have to see that the word starts or ends with the same letters or combination of letters.
Access to Books
The last topic I want to discuss deals with the requirements for access to books in the early childhood environment. The proponents of whole language want children to see written words as much as possible before they enter school. The book requirements have other intentions as well especially those dealing with cultural awareness, but that has to do with the pictures. Again, this method helps visual learners only. Auditory learners may be able to "quote" familiar books using the pictures, but I guarantee the written words are merely decorations to these children. This does not give auditory learners any help in decoding the words. The more dominant a child's dependence on auditory learning, the more likely that child benefits little from this type of exposure.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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