Student potential can be realized in a rich and integrated environment. Recently, the cry for greater curriculum integration has prompted many schools to adopt an integrated language arts approach. This shifts the instructional focus from gaining language proficiency to using language as a tool for learning desirable content. All forms of language are used in a natural pursuit of knowledge. There is no artificial separation of writing from spelling, of literature from grammar.
Students read and write as they explore issues.
They integrate the language arts. These new initiatives in language arts focus on the learner and on the processes that the learner uses to comprehend the written word or to write a composition. In fact, some theorists go so far as to say that children will learn to read and write on their own if their education at home and at school promotes communication, not skill development. Throughout this century, reading instruction methodology has referred to a reading process. Building background, reading for a purpose, and reviewing reading have been a part of teacher training and of basal reader textbooks since the 1920s.