[Edling] Why Boosting Poor Children’s Vocabulary Is Important for Public Health

Richard Hudson r.hudson at ucl.ac.uk
Thu Sep 17 08:36:09 UTC 2015 

Ok, but they don't quote empirical evidence that contradicts the Hart & 
Risley data, do they? And they don't mention Gordon Wells's large-scale 
research project in Bristol (England) which did find vocabulary 
differences correlating with social class. Here's what I said about it 
in my 1996 Sociolinguistics (2nd edition):


Here are the references:


Well worth exploring!

Dick


On 16/09/2015 15:42, Daniel Ginsberg wrote:
> I think they'd question the empirical basis for that claim. It's 
> usually cited to Hart & Risley 1995, which as I mentioned is a highly 
> flawed piece of work. Here's a thorough critical response to it: 
> http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/med/LangPoor.pdf There's a 
> lot there in a relatively short article, but here's a key quote for 
> this discussion:
>
>     Many educational researchers and policy makers have generalized
>     the findings about the language and culture of the 6 welfare
>     families in Hart and Risley’s study to all poor families. Yet,
>     Hart and Risley offer no compelling reason to believe that the
>     poor families they studied have much in common with poor families
>     in other communities, or even in Kansas City for that matter. The
>     primary selection criterion for participation in this study was
>     socioeconomic status; therefore, all the 6 welfare families had in
>     common was income, a willingness to participate in the study, race
>     (all the welfare families were Black), and geography (all lived in
>     the Kansas City area). Families living in poverty are, however, an
>     ethnically, linguistically, and racially diverse group (US Census
>     Bureau, 2003). Strong claims about the language and culture of
>     families living in poverty based on a sample of 6 Black welfare
>     families living in Kansas City are unwarranted. (p. 364)
>
>
> --
> Daniel Ginsberg
> Doctoral candidate, Linguistics
> Georgetown University
> http://georgetown.academia.edu/DanielGinsberg
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 4:22 AM, Richard Hudson <r.hudson at ucl.ac.uk 
> <mailto:r.hudson at ucl.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Hello again Daniel. Thanks for the interesting link. Would you
>     agree that even these researchers accept that poor children reach
>     school with fewer words than rich children?
>
>     Dick Hudson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     On 15/09/2015 21:51, Daniel Ginsberg wrote:
>>     There was an invited forum in Jnl Ling Anth earlier this year
>>     that debunked a lot of this "word gap" discourse. I would love to
>>     see more public awareness of this, and less uncritical citation
>>     of the highly flawed Hart & Risley study.
>>
>>     http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jola.12071/full
>>
>>     --
>>     Daniel Ginsberg
>>     Doctoral candidate, Linguistics
>>     Georgetown University
>>     http://georgetown.academia.edu/DanielGinsberg
>>
>>     On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Francis Hult
>>     <francis.hult at englund.lu.se <mailto:francis.hult at englund.lu.se>>
>>     wrote:
>>
>>         [Moderator's note: I post this story because it relates to a
>>         discourse that is gaining public traction.  I am reminded of
>>         an article that was recently posted to Edling:
>>
>>         Johnson, E.J. (2015) Debunking the “language gap”. /Journal
>>         for Multicultural Education, 9/(1), 42-50.
>>
>>         I wonder what perspectives list members working in different
>>         research traditions have on this topic.  What additional
>>         research findings and ideas should we be getting out to the
>>         public and how? FMH]
>>
>>         The Atlantic
>>
>>         Why Boosting Poor Children’s Vocabulary Is Important for
>>         Public Health
>>
>>         Re­search sug­gests that poor chil­dren hear about 600 words
>>         per hour, while af­flu­ent chil­dren hear 2,000. By age 4, a
>>         poor child has a listen­ing vocab­u­lary of about 3,000
>>         words, while a wealth­i­er child wields a 20,000-word
>>         listen­ing vocab­u­lary. So it’s no sur­prise that poor
>>         chil­dren tend to enter kinder­garten already be­hind their
>>         wealth­i­er peers.
>>
>>         But it’s not just the poverty that holds them back—it’s the
>>         lack of words. In fact, the single-best pre­dict­or of a
>>         child’s aca­dem­ic suc­cess is not par­ent­al edu­ca­tion or
>>         so­cioeco­nom­ic status, but rather the qual­ity and quantity
>>         of the words that a baby hears dur­ing his or her first three
>>         years.
>>
>>         Full story:
>>         http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/georgias-plan-to-close-the-30-million-word-gap-for-kids/403903/
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>     -- 
>     Richard Hudson (dickhudson.com <http://dickhudson.com>)
>
>
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-- 
Richard Hudson (dickhudson.com)

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