Hello Dan, Shelia and ALL, 
 I am a Year 1 teacher in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and upon realising  
 I have not delurked on this echo, thought I would introduce myself.
 In tonight's download I felt I was doing a time shift back to college days,  
 particularly seeing Ivan Illich Noam Chomsky Kenneth Goodman Marie Clay et 
 al. (I'm sure I have Deschooling Society downstairs on the bookshelf.)
 
 These are the things upon which I was brought up.
 
 DT> I will try.  I have spent several years both as an undergraduate and
 DT> on  work toward my master's degree studying whole language.  Even with
 DT> 7  years experience in early childhood I am still learning.  It will be
 ...and you have done an excellent job of explaining the Whole Language 
 Approach.
 In Queensland, it was around in at least the late 1970s. I started Uni in  
 1980 and it was a theory of prime importance in our education. I still have 
 the essay in my filing cabinet entitled "Reading is a psycholinguistic 
 guessing game" Discuss. Of course this was Goodman. I am not sure if this 
 was just bias of the Language school at the uni I went to or not but it 
 certainly was the emphasis.  
 
 Immersion in language is absolutely fundamental. I usually tell the parents
 at the beginning of the school year that I can tell the children who have 
 been read to regularly in the years before they come to school. In the lower
 socio-economic area where I teach , sadly, I can also tell the children who 
 come from homes where oral language is poor. If oral language, as you say, 
 is not learned narturally the patterning for literacy does not follow.
 In 1981, I was MOST fortunate to go to Christchurch in New Zealand for a 
 six week prac which I believe to have been the most professionally rewarding 
 thing I ever did as they were masters of the whole language approach.
 I remember being horrified that a child was reading to me with out reading. 
 He was reading from oral/aural memory. Again if you do not have sufficient 
 oral language your cueing systems are flawed!
 The whole language approach has come in for criticism in other Australian 
 States.
 In Queensland, I believe, being that little bit more conservative, it was 
 introduced not as a single approach but as a philosophy and a method through
 which a child's detective skills could be honed. The early literacy in-
 service course from which later curriculum changes were made used many 
 approaches to assist Queensland teachers to teach literacy.
 
 I teach phonics, phonemics, chunks, cues, word banks (ie sole role mole etc
 a la Margaret Peters/Duncan Cripps) and next week I will begin a spelling 
 program called Quota (designed on sounding out words, sight words, and the 
 most common words), oh and most importantly a love of language. 
 I always send my children home on the first day of school thinking they can 
 read and therein lies half the battle. Their interested relatives, afterall, 
 have been telling them all sumer holidays that when they go to school they 
 will learn to read.
 It is all swings and roundabouts to me and any discussion is most welcome.
 Regards, 
 Erica.
 PS I have seen an instant improvement in the childen's writing since they 
 started writing to their internet buddies in Christchurch - since they 
 have an audience.
 DT> Reading is taught in much the same way.  Rather than isolating basic 
 DT> skills, children have reading experiences.  They use print daily, are 
 DT> exposed to books, write letters, journals, and other reading and
 DT> writing  activities.  Through these activities children "teach
 DT> themselves" about  the forms, functions, and conventions of print.
 DT> (When I say "teach  themselves" I mean like learning to speak is self
 DT> taught) 
 I prefer to talk about it as osmosis - you know it just goes in !!!!!
... I never said I could type...
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