Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited[8] 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,[7] despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness.[9] 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.[10][11][12]
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.[13] 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)[11][6][4] are not as effective as phonics-based approaches.[18]
^Goodman, K.S. (1970). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In H. Singer & R.B. Ruddell (Eds.) Theoretical models and processes of reading. Newark, D.E.: International Reading Association.
^ abSmith, Frank (1971). Understanding reading: A psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to read. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.