Talk:Whole language

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[edit] POV

"that it serves chiefly to provide employment for special ed teachers."

That's really treading on POV. That's an insult, not a fact asserted by the critics. It's true that the insult is properly attributed to the critics, but it's still not really a fact they believe so much as a slur on the educational system.

Might be possible to NPOV this by ending the sentence before this thought and saying something like, "They further assert that whole language is the primary reason so many remedial reading teachers and programs are necessary."

Jdavidb 18:47, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

--Which is the truth. Most children receiving special education services shouldn't even be getting them in the first place if the curriculum wasn't so fouled up. High school-style language arts instruction, which "whole language" really is at bottom, is inappropriate in the early school years. Children need to know how to decode in order to get "meaning" from what they read. "Whole language" merely prompted an "accountability" backlash which has resulted in the monstrous No Child Left Behind.
Thanks, Ken Goodman, for nothing.-sn, a special ed teacher 1/14/07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.53.202.49 (talk • contribs)

[edit] article needs work

This page needs significant work. Having been taught by phonics myself I have no understanding of what this alternative is, and why people advocate it, so I can't help directly. However, as a start I can at least point out why the bullet-points on this page don't tell me anything

  • literate classroom environment

What's a "literate environment"? Three things come to mind: a) the teachers are literate, which should a prerequisite for any literacy program, b) the pupils are literate, which means that you don't need a literacy program at all, or c) the walls are talking to you.

  • reading to and with students

Surely you can't teach literacy without reading, so this should be a characteristic of any literacy program. It's certainly a characteristic of phonics.

  • individualized instruction

This is just a resourcing issue, not a different style of teaching.

  • independent reading

Again, surely you can't teach literacy without reading. I'd expect all programs to have this.

  • students as authors

And you can't teach literacy without writing. Nothing special.

_____

This article is biased and NOT VERIFIABLE. Please revise.

  • integrating literacy skills into curriculum across disciplines

What, like reading textbooks and writing things on a board? Were there schools that just talked phonics in an isolated setting and then threw away the blackboard and didn't use any textbooks? Or is there something more to this?

  • increased parent involvement

This, again, is a resourcing issue, not really a style of teaching. Ideally you'd get parents to help out with teaching all parts of the curriculum.

I'm not attacking Whole Language, I think the problem is that the article doesn't explain what Whole Language is.

Ben Arnold 7 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)

[edit] removed

"Arguing against the pictographic point of view aforementioned, some employ the following simile: teaching a phonetic language using Whole Language is like teaching people to read Chinese without teaching them how to write the letters. This would, they hold, hamper one's ability to remember and distinguish between letters."

Aside from the awkward sentence structures, this implies that the Chinese written language has letters - obviously it does not. While it does have pronunciation systems to aid in its teaching that either have letters (pinyin) or something similar (zhuyin), I find that this para doesn't seem to add much to the article, and I'd rather take it out than make the corrective edits. Perhaps someone else wants to put this back in cleaner and correct form? --Ur Wurst Enema 06:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I should also add that while I'm no linguist I do agree with the general idea of the removed para. It would be pretty hard to be literate in Chinese without learning either pinyin or zhuyin. --Ur Wurst Enema 06:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article needs work reply

I believe this is what the author meant in the bullets:

Literate classroom environment = Print-rich environment as in having lots of print such as stories written by students, labels, poems, diagrams, etc... on the walls of the classroom where students can view them.

Reading to and with students = reading to/with students using authentic literature rather than using textbooks which are usually written to teach specific skills and lack the vocabulary, style, subject matter, variety of form and complexity that mainstream and prize-winning children's books have.

individualized instruction = could mean differentiated instruction where the teacher works with small groups of students to develop skills they need to develop that other students may have already developed. This would be different than in a class where the teacher teaches and paces the skills equally for the entire class and ignores the fact that the students are different levels of proficiency.

independent reading = independent reading of reading level appropriate, authentic literature.

students as authors = students writing using the writing process and acting as professional authors do by choosing their own topics, revising their work and publishing (making books out of) their material. The traditional writing instruction would be focused on teacher-given writing assignments with the focus on spelling and convention.

integrating literacy skills = using reading, writing, listening and speaking as a means to learning information about other subjects such as math, science and social studies. Not just reading textbooks and writing things on the board but using literacy skills to read articles, stories, non-fiction books, internet sources, letters from professionals in that field etc...

Anyway, like I said, I think that's what the author may have meant but I could be wrong.

[edit] National Geographic Channel randomised intermediate letters

National Geographic Channel has an item that demonstrates that so long as the first and last letters of a word are correct, the letters in between can be randomised without affecting the meaning.

Nioatanl Gorghpeaic Cnenahl has an ietm that datsntoarems taht so lnog as the frsit and lsat 
lteerts of a wrod are cerorct, the lteters in beweten can be romdanised wuhtiot atecffnig 
the minneag.

This claim is superficially true, but what you cannot be sure of is whether two or more words share the same random pattern. Should pairs of words share the same pattern, sometimes this might lead to loss of meaning, while other times this might lead to a completely wrong and dangerous meaning. It may also be true that the longer words are the harder they are to decode, in which case the reader may get stuck. Since Microsoft Word doesn't have a word-randomising function, the randomisation has to be done by hand, which is slow and difficult.

It is hard to think of dangerous word pair examples, however the onus in on the advocates of National Graphic randomised intermediate letters to show that such problems will never occur.

Tabletop 04:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin and Development of the Philosophy

Why is there nothing on the origins of this educational philosophy? It would be a good addition to the article.


[edit] Major Revision

I made major changes to the text of this article. I retained from the original author's work the clear substantive points made but took pains to reframe the article so that this controversial subject is treated neutrally. I do hope that I have accomplished that task. It SHOULD be clear that this is an area over which there is considerable debate, rancor, and disagreement. It SHOULD be clear that whole language has important benefits and that many have raised concerns. It SHOULD NOT seem like an endorsement of whole language or like it is supporting the "non-whole language" view.

As the previous poster suggested, I included some basic epistemological background. I am happy to discuss further revisions and share my understanding of this area with those interested.

--Kearnsdm 09:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National Geographic Channel randomised intermediate letters goes haywire

An example of the National Geographic randomized intermediate spelling going haywire has surfaced. This week's Economist newspaper has a heading that read:

but due to greater familiarity with another place it was read as

OK, its not a perfect transposition, as an N is swapped with a M, and a S is swapped with a Z.

Nonetheless, such misunderstandings are asking for trouble in the long run. National Geographic fails to warn of any problems.

Tabletop 04:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National Geographic Randomised Letters - Jump to conclusions

When using NGRIL, your eyes sometimes jump to conclusions:

Tabletop 04:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Chomsky

Was Chomsky really associated with the idea that written language should be imparted the way spoken language is? --Gargletheape 04:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

No, but Ken Goodman used to claim he was. Apparently he had bagels with Chomsky at breakfast during a conference in the early 1960s and Chomsky told Goodman that his work sounded interesting. That's all there is.

Chomsky's theory was about learning spoken language. Goodman applied Chomsky's theory and extended it to written language, asserting that just as children learn to speak "naturally" by being surrounded by people speaking, children learn to read "naturally" by being surrounded by print.
Not true. It's proven not to be true. Nonetheless, the theory continues to be discussed and promoted by many.
Rosmoran (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning-based phonics?

Is that like colour-based smell? Not to sound peevish, but I hope we as writers of this article are not products of this system.  :) Some of it is a little opaque - but I'm afraid there isn't anything I can suggest. :( Stevebritgimp (talk) 21:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

What should be communicated (in a non partisan way, which is why I don't try to write it myself!) is that many whole language proponents claim that they also "teach phonics." What teachers actually do is to point out individual letter/sound combinations opportunistically, that is, when they encounter a letter that the teacher knows students need help with -- these are called "mini lessons." It's not meaning-based phonics. It's really a way for whole language supporters to counter the resurgence of phonics as a useful method of early reading instruction.
Best, Rosmoran (talk) 02:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I changed the offending sentence to "meaning-based word recognition" and added a clause specifically about phonics. Very funny. There's a complete discussion of whole language "phonics" in the "contrasts with phonics section." Rosmoran, I'm not sure if you were indicating you think that section should be changed or not. Take a look at it again, and maybe we can think of ways to strengthen it. I do think it covers a fair amount of the territory you mention above. Kearnsdm (talk) 05:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm probably just showing my ignorance here, but I don't know what is meant by the term "meaning-based word recognition". Is this the (misguided) theory of using context to identify an unknown word, rather than looking at the orthographic representation of the unknown word?
Rosmoran (talk) 07:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi rosmoran. Yes, what you're talking about is exactly what is advocated. Frank Smith (as recently as 2004) and Ken Goodman (as recently as 2003--I think that's the right year) are still saying phonics does no good. That view has been quite marginalized in a lot of the literature, but it's more prevalent than you might think. This idea of word recognition is also meaning-based in the sense that it happens in the context of reading quality literature for a comprehension purpose. There may be a better way to say all of this. Thoughts? Kearnsdm (talk) 04:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Kearnsdm. I doubt I'd be surprised by the prevalence of this view --- I see it everywhere from elementary classrooms to university teacher programs. Not too much in research literature, though, but whole language proponents explain this away by saying that "scientific" research is irrelevant for what they do. Convenient, no?
Perhaps the focus of the section ought to be individual word identification, contrasting how whole language and phonics programs approach this issue.
If we can agree on this purpose, here's a proposed list of items to be communicated in this section:
  • Students are discouraged from using phonics to identify an unknown word
  • Students are encouraged to read the sentence and "guess" what word would work in context of the sentence (I think this is the "making meaning" part of word identification in whole language)
  • Mistaken word identification is acceptable if the meaning is not changed (for example, reading "pony" instead of "horse")
I'm sure I'm missing things, but it's a start. Let's shoot arrows at the strawman. :-)
Rosmoran (talk) 08:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea. However, I think we will actually need two subsections. The first should contain the information already in the "contrasts with phonics section" regarding "embedded phonics," which actually does mean phonics instruction. So, I think we should have the subsections, "Whole language word identification: embedded phonics" and "Whole language word identification: no phonics" (not these exact titles, but ones that communicate these ideas), because they are different.
Also, I think you're right about the "pony/horse" example; that's part of the three cuing systems idea that is mentioned in the article (i.e., reading is the product of three cuing systems which overlap and contribute uniquely to word identification and comprehension).
It will be especially important to have good references for all of this because, whether or not it's a straw man, it is not universally acknowledged to be one! I do have the original Goodman article (1967) if you'd like to take a look (I can e-mail it if you give me your e-mail address) as well as Pressley (2006), whose book Reading Instruction that Works gives a really clear explanation for why whole language for word identification could be problematic. It's also good because Pressley took a mixed methods approach and is pretty much liked by people on all sides of the issues.
Kearnsdm (talk) 17:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Ha! I was referring to my proposed list of topics as a "strawman"! Whole language proponents would most definitely not consider it a strawman. In my experience, it rather seems to be a religion based on blind faith. (There I go showing my reading politics again ....)
I'll leave you my email address on your personal page.
Best, Rosmoran (talk) 23:17, 23 February 2008 (UTC)