Whole language

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Whole language is a discredited philosophy of reading and an educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. However, researchers such as Reid Lyon say that "reading is not a natural process", and many students, when learning to read, require direct instruction in alphabetic coding, phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and comprehension. Whole language approaches to reading instruction are typically contrasted with the far more effective phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing. Phonics-based methods emphasize instruction for decoding and spelling. Whole language practitioners disagree with that view, instead focusing on teaching meaning and making students read more. The scientific consensus is that whole language-based methods of reading instruction (e.g., teaching children to use context cues to guess the meaning of a printed word) are not as effective as phonics-based approaches. Rejection of whole language (and its offshoot, balanced literacy) was a key component in the Mississippi Miracle of increased academic performance across the Southern United States in the 2010s and 2020s.