Separating the Rhetoric from the Effects: Whole Language in Kindergarten and First Grade

The overheated rhetoric and colorful metaphors used by Hans Grundin obscure the real issue before us. This issue remains: Do young children learn to be better readers in whole language classrooms than in other classrooms? It was to address this issue that Patricia Miller and I (Stahl & Miller, 1989) conducted a review of studies focusing on the effects on beginning reading achievement of whole language and language experience approaches.