Whole Language Learning

Classroom context:

Ningbo Xiaoshi High School, number 86 ranked public school in China by their dept. of Education. Student backgrounds are native Chinese who have at least conversational English, and are preparing to attend universities in the west in which English is the language of instruction. Economic background is at least middle class, usually upper-class.

I am currently teaching Grade 11, DP1 (grade 12), and Extended Essay workshops. I am teaching IBDP1 Language B, which is a synthesis of a literature class and an ESL class. Students still need practice speaking and using a variety of sentence structures, along with the the more basic literature skill-sets of taking notes, annotating, summarizing, interpreting, analyzing, etc.

Whole language Learning is extremely important, especially in the classes I’m teaching now. Since students are very capable and motivated high level students, they mostly need to simply improve their vocabulary to perform well on their external assessments. Whole language learning prioritizes learning vocabulary in natural contexts, something that is clearly supported by the research performed by Stahl and Kapinus in which they found that using new vocabulary in as many contexts as possible was the most effective way to retain them.

Learning is most often retained when it can be contextualized to the individual’s experiences- if we can add it to our mosaic of conceptual understanding by incorporating it into a larger schema, it will most likely be retained. This is why so many mnemonic devices are so effective in their use of acronyms, as they take a string of letters or ideas that don’t have a whole unified concept and create a conceptual framework on which to hang those ideas. This concept is why whole language is important in the classroom- it creates a large context in which we can fit vocab words, grammar, syntax, etc. Its important to note though that the effectiveness of these types of techniques are highly dependent on fitting the instruction to local needs and contexts, lest we lose what makes those connections between text and conceptual understanding so strong. (Dixon, et al.)

I’ve attempted to reflect on my own process of learning to speak, read, and write, and I mostly drew a blank as I don't really remember how I learned. After some discussion with my mother, I realize that most of my learning came from whole language learning- I was a prodigious reader as a child, and my reading level was always a few grades above my actual level, so I never really learned as much in school as I did from simply reading texts. This is reflected in the massive number of words that I violently mispronounce- I was exposed to them by reading on my own, and used contextual clues to learn what the words meant, but as I never spoke them or heard them spoken, often mispronounced them when using them for the first time in social circumstances. This is where the weakness of whole language learning comes in- it’s unwillingness to systematically examine the structure of language allows for gaps in the learner’s conceptual knowledge of language itself- whether it is simple pronunciation/enunciation issues or grammatical structures and the rules behind them. As Picasso said, “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”- if we don’t examine the structure of language in an academic setting, we can accidentally learn the “wrong” rules through the language we do see in informal contexts.

Currently I give weekly vocabulary exams. I choose the vocabulary words entirely on feedback from class- if I or a text uses a word I deem they should know and they don't already know it, it goes on the list. The way that I have checked to see if students have learned the words in the past is through simple multiple choice quizzes, but whole language learning theory tells me that it may be a more effective use of their time were I to assign a text/excerpt/scene to write, and they have to incorporate the vocabulary words into that. This way, they get practice using the words in authentic contexts which should improve comprehension and retention.

Stahl, S. A., & Kapinus, B. (2001). Word power: What every educator needs to know about teaching vocabulary. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association.

Dixon, Joan and Tuladhar, Sumon, "Whole Language: An Integrated Approach to Reading and Writing" (1996). Action-Learning Manuals for Adult Literacy. 4. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cie_actionlearningmanual/4