A Study On Whole Language

As a trend of thought on language education born in the United States in the middle 20th century, whole language, based on a principle of wholeness and connectedness, examines the nature of language and language learning, and with changing the current state of language education featuring skill cultivation as the aim, it raises the basic notion on organizing language curriculum and instruction implementation. It dominated the language education policies of many districts in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, and drew the attention of the scholars in the whole world, including the Chinese scholars. This study, aiming to develop and perfect the whole language theory, tries to explore the historical context of the occurence and development of whole language, probe into the basic theories, focuses on the questions about language learning, and advances the social-cultural perspective of language learning. A case study was also included so as to perfect the author's understanding of whole language and the social-cultural perspective of the language learning, and to drew some lessons from it to guide the language education reform being carried out in China.Outline of the paper:The first chapter first explores the historical reasons for the birth and growth of whole language from the aspects of American politics, education and social life, and tries to identify the important issues in its emergence and development. On this basis, the chapter puts forward the division line of the stages of its development.The second chapter analyses the origin of whole language theory from education, psychology and linguistics. A review on some scholar's ideas on language learning and development, language education, such Comenius, Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Halliday, lays a foundation for the understanding of the main theoretical points of whole language.Chapter Three dwells upon the basic ideas of whole language theory from the five perspectives, namely the language view, language learning view, language development view, curriculum view and instruction view, thus constitutes an overall picture of the whole language theory. Chapter Four comments on the contribution of whole language theory and its limitations by way of a comparison of the basic ideas of the mainstream linguistics and the mainstream psychology as well as an description of the background of the American reform. Furthermore, this chapter presents the implications of whole language on the Chinese language education.The fifth chapter discloses the social-cultural position of whole language on language learning, and on this basis, it elaborates on the content, traits, basic ideas and implementation models of the cultural perspective of language learning, drawing on the ideas from contemporary learning sciences, socio-lingusitics, functional linguistics, cultural psychology and educational politics.Chapter 6 focuses on elementary writing activities, and describes a study case undertaken in a primary school of Shang Hai on the implementation of social-cultural perspective of language learning. With abundant materials and data, this case validates the efficacy of the activity models and deepens the understanding of whole language and the social-cultural perspective of language learning.