Whole Language

Whole language is a philosophical perspective about how language is acquired. The premise of this perspective is that acquiring language is easy when it is kept whole and meaningful and it is hard when it is broken down into a series of discrete, isolated skills that are abstract and meaningless to the language learner. Anyone who has watched toddlers acquire language knows it happens in contexts in which children need language to serve their purposes and are treated as competent language users before they actually are. Most of us have engaged in conversations with infants as young as 1 month old, asking questions of them (“Are you sleepy?”), pointing out things of interest (“Look at the kitty!”), or explaining some phenomenon (“We had better get in the house before those dark clouds shower us with rain!”). In each case, language was used to communicate and inform, not to teach the child about language; yet we know it is through these meaningful interactions that children become competent language users.

Few of us try to teach infants language by breaking it into parts, moving from abstract sounds to more meaningful use. It would not be natural; it would not be successful. Yet in schools, teachers often do just that. Rather than keeping language whole, they break it down, instructing children letter by letter, syllable by syllable, and sentence by sentence. Whole-language teachers prefer to support students in the same way they have been supported before entering school. They create meaningful contexts in which students need language to get things done. They assess each student's language ability and build on it in meaningful ways. Much like a parent who responds “Oh, so you want a drink of water” to a very young child who points to the kitchen faucet and says “Waa,” a teacher writes “Your monster scares me!” in response to a child's written words “Da mnstrs s mn” (the monster is mean). The teacher's response, like the parent's, focuses on the meaning the language conveys and expands on it by providing the child with a demonstration of a more conventional way of stating the meaning. And just like parents who trust that with enough interaction and guidance, their children will become competent language users, whole-language teachers trust that with the same type of rich language and literacy experiences and support, their students will continue to develop and grow as language learners.

The role of the whole-language teacher is critical to students' language acquisition. In these settings, the teacher is a close observer of their students, noting strengths and needs and creating a curriculum based on these observations to support students' development. If children enter kindergarten already reading, the teacher makes note of this and matches them to books that will inspire them to keep reading, rather than having them sit through endless experiences geared toward emergent readers. When a middle school student who does not like to read enters a whole-language classroom, the teacher patiently works to match books with the student's interests, so reading becomes something the student wants to do, not something he or she has to do. Once students choose to read because they want to and like to, the potential for growth is much greater.

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