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Whole Language Theory as Employed in Writing Centers

In her article, “Collaborative Learning and Whole Language Theory,” Sallyanne Fitzgerald discusses the connection between writing centers, collaborative learning, and whole language theory. Fitzgerald asserts, “[C]ollaborative learning empowers students to become successful writers because the underlying theory is whole language theory. In using all the language arts, each collaborative acts frees the participants by helping them process information in such a way as to ensure that it is accessible” (17). Writing centers employ collaborative learning to facilitate a generative understanding of writing, speaking, and listening acts. This understanding underpins the writing conference and contributes to the student’s learning process about language arts as a whole.

Whole language theory benefits the basic writer in such a way that they are provided access to all forms of the communicative process, not only writing, so that the information can be processed thoroughly and new information can be added as well. Fitzgerald contends, “In a writing center conference, hearing a tutor read aloud what the tutee has written, or the tutee’s reading aloud his or her own work, may help the tutee ‘see’ where change is needed so that when composing subsequent drafts, the tutee is better able to remember what may be needed” (13).

The implication for mainstreamed students is clear: by combining speaking, reading, and listening in a writing center consultation, students will achieve better success in the act of writing. Rather than the focus on the skills and drills of the written product, a common practice in basic writing classrooms, the whole language theory, as applied by writing centers, opens up the writing process to acknowledge all the language arts, thus enabling success in all the forms of communication.