The theory behind whole language learning is for students to learn to read and write the same way they learned to speak. Students in a whole language classroom learn language as a whole entity, rather than something that can be broken down and decoded into steps. For example, while a child in a phonics-based classroom would first learn small units of language like letters and morphemes, followed by words and sentences and eventually entire paragraphs, a child in a whole language classroom focuses on the flow and meaning of text and learns to decode words based on their context within the greater whole of the sentence or passage.
Though the process of scaffolding may be more straightforward in a phonics-based classroom, it exists in and is vital to a whole language approach. The whole language approach stresses that children should build on what they already know to discover and better learn new concepts. A child in this type of classroom would build on what he already knows about writing to construct sentences, for example, about his family.
A teacher employing the whole language approach is much more likely to encourage students to learn through discovery, rather than through direct instruction. But this does not mean that the whole language approach involves no direct instruction. Nor does it mean that knowledge of phonics is not taught to children. Instead, students gain phonics skills as taught in the context of full language understanding, rather than as isolated skills that must later be patched together to form a more whole understanding of language.
Whole language learning was designed to provide children with a better understanding of the full context of language. This approach emphasizes creativity when applied to learning to read and write rather than rote memorization of concepts that may contribute to some children's opinions of reading and writing as chore-like. Children who learn through whole language learning, however, may not develop as much accuracy in pronunciation, word recognition and spelling skills as one who learned through phonics-based teaching.