fered. If, for example, reading is the objective of the instructional process, whole language learners will read trade books (rather than basals) and inductively discover syntax, morphology, and vocabulary. If the subject is arithmetic, the learner will solve practical problems (within his or her own life experiences) to discover the rules of arithmetic. The whole learner, thus, learns from the whole to the parts.
"The basic advantages of the whole method are both that the learner can better grasp the relationship of each part to every other part as well as to the learning task in its entirety, and that he does not have to forge connecting links between separately learned parts." (Ausubel, 1968, p. 306). Note that, in addition to these advantages, there are substantial motivational benefits. The learner accesses meaning before form, thereby reaching his goal much more quickly than if he had to learn grammatical rules before attempting to read a story, or the multiplication table before solving simple arithmetical problems--a definite motivational mechanism which enhances his self-confidence and perseverance. Note, however, that "The feasibility of the whole method... depends on the existence of a relatively uniform level of difficulty throughout the task. If this is not the case, the learner will devote too little time to difficult portions of the material and too much time to easy portions." (Ausubel, 1968, p. 307).
A first step towards whole learning may have been the whole-word method which is "based on the fact that words are perceived as wholes; it aims to make word recognition automatic through over-learning." (Frostig & Maslow, 1973, p. 294). The success of this approach encouraged experimenters to increase the size of the unit of global perception. Diagonal reading is a technique of reading which precisely calls upon the reader's ability to perceive whole sentences or even paragraphs without analyzing them into their el...