[Edling] Why Boosting Poor Children¹s Vocabulary Is Important for Public Health

Francis Hult francis.hult at englund.lu.se
Fri Sep 18 13:29:54 UTC 2015 

These are great pieces that summarize a substantial body of work.  Yet, the public discourse continues to be dominated by one perspective.  Are we missing something about making findings like the ones discussed in these forum pieces part of public and political consciousness?  Is it because we're talking to each other in journals instead of to citizens and politicians in accessible books and magazine articles?  Is it because Hart & Risley suggest an easy answer while we focus on nuances and complexity?  Is it because we haven't succeeded in making findings  easy for citizens, politicians, and educational leaders to latch onto and translate into programs?



This just seems like one of those issues on which we have a very strong foundation, but people are still choosing to build somewhere swampier.  Shouldn't we be able to attract more attention?



Francis



--
Francis M. Hult, PhD
Associate Professor
Centre for Languages and Literature
Lund University

Web: http://www.sol.lu.se/en/sol/staff/FrancisHult/

Editor, Educational Linguistics book series
http://www.springer.com/series/5894

Co-editor, Contributions to the Sociology of Language book series
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New Book: Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide
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________________________________
From: edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se [edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se] on behalf of Peter Sayer [peter.sayer at utsa.edu]
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2015 20:37
To: The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: Re: [Edling] Why Boosting Poor Children¹s Vocabulary Is Important for Public Health

Yeah I saw that forum piece when it came out – very cool!

- peter.-

From: <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of Eric Johnson <ejj at tricity.wsu.edu<mailto:ejj at tricity.wsu.edu>>
Reply-To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 2:05 PM
To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Subject: Re: [Edling] Why Boosting Poor Children’s Vocabulary Is Important for Public Health

You might also like this piece (attached) that was recently published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.  Here’s the cite in case the attachment doesn’t go through:



Avineri, N., et al. (2015). Invited forum: Bridging the "language gap." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25(1), 66-86.



---------------------------------------------
Eric J. Johnson, Ph.D.
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Se habla español.
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¡Vamos Cougs!

From: edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se> [mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se] On Behalf Of Daniel Ginsberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 7:42 AM
To: The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: Re: [Edling] Why Boosting Poor Children’s Vocabulary Is Important for Public Health

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/med/LangPoor.pdf&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=60b6bd5fe85fbe058acfd3586d018d3b7a9f36a2f2da17a7fdd6266510df592b> 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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://georgetown.academia.edu/DanielGinsberg&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=1ff97f56be6bf9247eda6836b39dc9b3c30af044993fa63deb374c3c376879f5>

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jola.12071/full&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=f08703c53fd54481f4b0a4375d0eba099baa74cc70b93b2f22ef28242547dff7>

--
Daniel Ginsberg
Doctoral candidate, Linguistics
Georgetown University
http://georgetown.academia.edu/DanielGinsberg<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://georgetown.academia.edu/DanielGinsberg&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=1ff97f56be6bf9247eda6836b39dc9b3c30af044993fa63deb374c3c376879f5>

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/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/georgias-plan-to-close-the-30-million-word-gap-for-kids/403903/&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=0153ee7d02cb6a4baaba3d07c409f88e8045c29d9599d31e8d9eac8296f92518>

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--

Richard Hudson (dickhudson.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://dickhudson.com&k=EWEYHnIvm0nsSxnW5y9VIw%3D%3D%0A&r=Cvavyy6y5l8AwEV%2BI2FsI3lqVU2gAbIkqBNSweUx9jU%3D%0A&m=z2Yv9e8aOdpgvZm0L6QjO7wKGfwkm2N5D8amr4pwK%2FA%3D%0A&s=ae4cf348db31864aa08ba4fa2a19e43ec0770d70497adce6b32f63976874fbf5>)

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