If your child has been struggling in school, especially with learning to read, you may be looking to other ideas to help them along. Whole language learning may have come up in your search, but do not be fooled! Whole language has been found to be unreliable, so make sure you don’t use it as part of your child’s education. It is a learning method and philosophy that has been hotly debated, but education experts have mostly rejected it.
What Is Whole Language?
Whole language is based on the idea that learning to read English comes naturally to humans in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. Aside from the fact that this ignores the existence of other languages and how young children and toddlers can learn to speak multiple languages at the same time, this idea has no support from science. This learning method was especially popular in the 1980s and 1990s, so you may have experienced it yourself.
Some elements of the method are opposite what we know works well for learning to read effectively. For example, the whole language method goes against learning phonics, which is an essential building block for students to learn to read and spell. Instead, whole language focuses on learning the meanings of words. This can also be called “lexical reading,” so if this term pops up in your child’s educational standards, you may want to talk to their teacher. This is a secondary skill that cannot be learned until your child has mastered phonics, so the whole language method approaches reading backwards.
Some who are in favor of whole language defend the method by saying it focuses on culturally and artistically important literature. However, this is not unique to whole language learning. Any reading program should include culturally diverse and quality literature.
The problem that whole language learning presents is that it can lead to your child learning to recognize some words and their meanings, but they will lack the basic skill to sound out words. This can limit their ability to discover new words and this can have a negative impact on their reading skills that follows them throughout their academic career. They can even miss out on learning how to spell by sounding words out.
A Better Idea
At Reading Genie, and at any school that is based on good educational practices, your child will learn to read, write, and spell effectively with phonics as their backbone. Whereas whole language learning forces students to just read more, Reading Genie encourages students to engage with texts in a way that is fun and helpful.
Even further, phonics-based methods emphasize learning how to decode words and how to spell. Spelling in English can be a very challenging skill due in part to the fact that a lot of English words come from other languages. Breaking words down in their phonics forms is an essential step in learning how to make sense of these words, expanding your child’s spelling vocabulary naturally.
Reading Genie uses a proper phonics system and can help your child learn to read while they have fun doing it. There is no need to add in extra discredited methods like whole language learning. The teachers at Reading Genie will help your child learn to read, write, and spell effectively while they are engaged and having fun.
