ALR B3 | Whole Language Learning

Question 1

In the 1920s, the French schoolteacher _____ promoted what he called a ‘work-based pedagogy’ that rejected the kind of centralized schoolplanning
associated with textbooks and examinations.

Answer 1

Célestin Freinet

Question 2

Freinet was impelled by the belief that ‘the key features of empty _____ are rules, books and
teachers … all forcing pupils to produce work with absolutely no basis in real life’

Answer 2

academic activity

Question 3

Instead, ‘by re-establishing
the cycle of life, by assuring constant ______ through creative work, we get beyond dry academic _____ and reach a far superior form of _____’.

Answer 3

motivation, exercises, classroom activity

Question 4

Freinet occupies one end of a continuum along which all teachers – whether teachers of first language literacy or of an additional language – _____ themselves.

Answer 4

situate

Question 5

At one extreme, there are those who believe that you learn a
language by studying each of its components first, that is, by progressing from the parts to the whole (often by means of ‘_____’).

Answer 5

dry academic exercises

Question 6

And there are those (like Freinet) who believe that you learn the components of the language by engaging with it as an integrated whole, in the form, for example, of ‘_____’. That is, learning goes from whole
to part.

Answer 6

creative work

Question 7

In first language literacy teaching, this division is most famously
represented in the _____ (often acrimonious) between those who
advocate the teaching of _____ and those who don’t.

Answer 7

arguments, phonics

Question 8

Phonics is the study
of _____, and its proponents argue that using this knowledge to ‘_____’ words is the best way of learning to read.

Answer 8

sound-letter relationships, sound out

Question 9

whole-language approach, on the other hand, takes a ‘_____’
perspective, in which reading involves working out word meanings from
_____, and recognizing word shapes by means of activities such as being
read to while following the words on the page, or reading aloud with the assistance of an adult or a slightly more proficient classmate.

Answer 9

top-down, context

Question 10

The whole language movement was popularized in North America in the 1990s, as a reaction to the prevailing atomistic (or ‘_____’)
approach to curriculum design, in which language arts were taught and tested in discrete, _____ units.

Answer 10

building block, de-contextualized

Question 11

The whole language approach emphasizes the social and cultural dimension of education. It also aims to promote the learner’s _____ through learning, a feature that aligns it with the _____ of education.

Answer 11

self-realization, humanistic tradition

Question 12

In this sense ‘whole’ stands not only for ‘whole _____’, but also ‘whole _____’: learning works best when the learner is engaged not only
intellectually but emotionally and even physically.

Answer 12

language, person

Question 13

Whole Language Learning, as implemented in second language classrooms,
shares many characteristics of both _____ and _____ Instruction.

Answer 13

Task-based, Text-based

Question 14

The starting point of any teaching cycle is not a discrete item of grammar, but the performance of a task, or engagement with a _____.

Answer 14

text

Question 15

This is why Whole Language Learning is most often associated with the teaching of the skills of _____ and _____.

Answer 15

reading, writing

Question 16

Marie Wilson Nelson (1991), for example, describes a five-year experiment at a college in the US, where writing workshops were offered to small groups, including English
language learners, and where there was no _____ – or _____, or
_____ – instruction.

Answer 16

formal writing, grammar, vocabulary

Question 17

Instead of pre-teaching or modelling the skills of writing, a process
approach was adopted – i.e. one which involved collaboration and multiple drafts – and in which ‘the tutors found that the most acceptable and effective teaching was to give the help the students asked for when they
asked for it’– instruction, that is to say, ‘at the _____.

Answer 17

point of need

Question 18

Nelson (op. cit.) and five independent teams of researchers found so:
‘Despite the loss of drive some suffered at first without _____, motivation surged when they experienced writing’s rewards: pride of publication …,
feelings of accomplishment, influence on others, better grades in other
courses, competence, empathy and praise from friends, and … emotional release’.

Answer 18

grades

Question 19

Likewise, ‘free voluntary reading’, an approach to first language
literacy training that is energetically promoted by Stephen Krashen (2004), and which is entirely consistent with the principles of Whole Language Learning, is equally positively _____: ‘In-school free reading studies and “out of school” self-reported free voluntary reading studies show that more reading results in better reading comprehension, writing style, vocabulary, spelling, and grammatical development’.

Answer 19

evaluated

Question 20

And he adds, ‘in faceto-
face comparisons, _____ is consistently shown to be more efficient than
direct instruction’. Krashen argues that the approach applies equally well to
second language development.

Answer 20

reading

Question 21

Despite these enthusiastic claims, as teachers we might be advised to hedge
our bets – especially given the research evidence that endorses the value of
a ‘_____’

Answer 21

focus on form

Question 22

As an instance of how a compromise might be reached, Courtney Cazden (1992) argues for what she calls whole language plus: ‘As people of any age learn to read and write, they need help in focusing attention on specific features of written language’.

Answer 22

language plus

Question 23

So, even when the primary focus is on task
performance, e.g. fluent reading or writing, she argues for the need for
‘_____’ in order to shift attention, when necessary, away
from the whole and on to the parts: ‘The idea of a _____ preserves what I believe to be essential: the prior establishment of a main road of meaningful
language use, to which the _____ is a momentary diversion when needed’.

Answer 23

instructional detours, detour, detour

Question 24

This is entirely consistent with Nelson’s notion of instruction ‘at the point of need’ or with what others have called ‘_____ teaching’. It is an
approach that Freinet, with his printing press, would have approved of.

Answer 24

just in time