Whole language is a discredited philosophy of reading and an educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. However, researchers such as Reid Lyon say that "reading is not a natural process", and many students, when learning to read, require direct instruction in alphabetic coding, phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and comprehension.