LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Whole Language
built 223 days ago
Whole Language (... called the 'Real Books' approach) obviously is a radically unorthodox approach to literacy development. Nevertheless, it has been approved by many national, regional and local school officials in the major English-speaking nations, ie, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. It also appears that a majority of professors of reading instruction at universities in these countries approve of WL, and thus direct future and inservice teachers to employ it, while counseling school officials to enforce its use. In the UK, the term 'Real Books' has been generally preferred to 'Whole Language'. In the past 2-3 years here, however, more direct and systematic phonics teaching has been insisted on by education authorities.
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"Whole Language" and the ideas that support it are a utopian fantasy in rebellion against discipline. The "Whole Language" approach to reading and writing frees the teacher from the rigors of teaching phonics, just as it frees the education professors from teaching the teachers how to do it. But "Whole Language" does not, and cannot, produce literacy. Meanwhile, the indices of literacy among American school children decline or remain unacceptably low. Almost half of college freshmen need remedial courses in English.
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Whole Language practices contributed positively to the involvement of teachers as decision makers for classroom practices. Whole Language places teachers in the role of expert, advocate, and guide; and encourages them to observe closely, match student interests to texts, give choices for interpreting and acting on texts, and use student responses to design future lessons. Yetta Goodman believes that current practices provide a very limited role for teachers in determining how teaching happens (p. 181). But the increased emphasis on schools as professional learning communities, and demands for professional development mandated by No Child Left Behind provide an opportunity for renewal of the collaboration framework established by Whole Language.
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"Whole Language advocates and detractors debate the highly touted, but still controversial, language arts instructional paradigm. The evidence for Whole Language claims is questioned and defended. Important questions are raised and responded to in this volume which includes proceedings from a debate held at the National Reading Conference in San Antonio."
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During this time, the bulk of the responsibility for educating parents and other teachers fell to Joanne while the responsibility for continued growth for those enthusiastic about Whole Language was shared among the teachers and Joanne. This occurred because the teachers did not feel altogether comfortable with the new ideas and practices they were imple-
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From a whole language perspective, reading (and language use in general) is a process of generating hypotheses in a meaning-making transaction in a sociological context…. This view of reading implies that there is no single “correct” meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings. (p. 19)
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Whole Language