Closing the Word Gap

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Strategies for Speaking with Young Children

Dr. Trisha CraigWheelock College – Singapore

September 20, 2014

How many words will you hear in the next 10 minutes?

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Somewhere between 1500 and 2000

What is the Word Gap?

• Ground-breaking work of Hart and Risley• Children from different socio-economic

levels acquired language at different rates• Professional level parents spoke more often

and with a greater variety of words from earlier ages. And the kind of talk varied.

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Jackfruit

WatermelonPear

Lychee

Kiwi

PineappleBananaPapaya

MangoPomelo

Mangosteen

Blueberry

Apple

LangsatDuria

n

What is the Word Gap?

• They studied families and 7-9 month old babies until 3 years old, observing and recording communication for 2 ½ years

• Families were upper, middle and lower SES• By age 3 noticeable differences:

Upper Middle LowerParents 382 251 167 Children 297 216 149

Average # of different words per hour

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Camel

Penguin

Lion

Giraffe

Toad

RhinoMonkey Macaque

FrogElephant

Crocodile

Leopard Hippo

LizardTiger

What is the Word Gap?

• By age 3, the difference in the number of words the high SES child has heard compared to a low SES child:

30,000,000

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Accountant

Journalist

Designer

Actor

Bank

erEngineer

Librarian

Vet

ChefTeacher

Architect

Geologist

Doctor

LawyerNurse

What is the Word Gap?

• Moats (1999) estimated that advantaged children entered primary school with a vocabulary of about 20,000 words compared with linguistically disadvantaged children who knew 5,000 words on average.

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Vehicle

Hatchback

FlatbedSUV

Taxi

Train

Minivan

MRT

TruckScooter

Limousine

Ambulance

Jalopy

SedanCar

Bus

Not just words, but how we speak

• Children from low SES homes are more likely to hear ‘command language’ and prohibitions rather than affirmations; opposite of high SES children

• High SES parents are more likely to ask questions and engage in conversational ‘turns’ with children

• Children from higher SES homes are more likely to have been read to: Adams (1990) found that poor children entered P1 with just 25 hours of having been read to compared with 1,000-1,700 hours for children from better-off families

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Go to bed

BecausePick up your toysSt

opGet dressed

Why

Come

Get down

Eat your supper

Time to wake up

Don’t

What is the long term effect?

• Many children enter kindergarten lagging behind their peers

• Test performance in P-3 is strongly related to early language proficiency

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Light green

Moss greenOlive green

Chartreuse

Emer

aldMint green

Neon green

Jade

CitronTeal

Turquoise

CeladonKelly green

MyrtleDark green

Narrowing the Word Gap

• Because the word gap has such long term implications, there are public policy issues

• First, some of the newest science:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLoEUEDqagQ

• And research based public policy intervention:http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26439798

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On account of

BecauseWhat do youthink?

After

Whe

nWhat will happen?

Instead

Why

NextThen

As a result of

What would

you do? What are they doing?

BeforeLater

Who

Will Concerted Efforts Help?• We still don’t know but important that the efforts are

being followed by researchers to test the effects of interventions

• There is a limit to what policies and interventions can do: many observers have pointed out that disadvantaged families face many obstacles, not just language gaps

• Targeting families and what goes on at home – preschool can help – Dana Suskind is now moving her research into the classroom

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What Doesn’t Work?

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“The worst thing that could come out of all this interest in vocabulary is flash cards with pictures

making kids memorize a thousand words.”- Dr. David Dickinson

- From http://nyti.ms/VylGon

What Does Work?The Three T’s

Dr. Dana Suskind from the University of Chicago has suggested the 3 T’s as a core behavioural strategy parents and teachers can use to help build vocabulary

• Tune In• Talk More• Take Turns

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Tune In

• Tune In means–Paying attention– Taking cues from the interests of the child –

what does the child want to talk about• In the classroom, listen to their conversations• At home, focus on what child is saying

– Young children will switch attention, you need to keep up; tuning in is a dynamic activity

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Talk More• Talk More means–Using as many descriptive words as possible– Take every opportunity to use descriptive

language

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Something as simple as a banana at breakfast can yield all kinds of descriptions:Texture: smooth, mushyDescriptors: yellow, brown, spotted, ripe, sweetSynonyms: skin, peel; slice, piece

Take Turns

• Take Turns means–Conversational turns–Back and forth– This giving the child a chance to speak is

very important for language development; even when the language is not command driven, it can’t be just the parent or teacher doing all the talking

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What Can Help?In the Classroom:

• One study showed gains when preschoolers were asked to do personal narration with trained volunteers

• Classrooms where children given the opportunity for maximum learning, esp. by extending their learning through questions and responses but a US study found only 15% of classrooms can be described that way

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What Can Help?In the Classroom:

• Dickinson and Tabors found that children in preschool typically spend 60% of their time not engaged in any conversation.

• Natural conversations, reading books while asking lots of questions (What do you think happens next? Why did she do that?), helping identify words during playtime.

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What Can Help?At Home:

• In households where mother tongue is spoken, important for parents to use that to converse with infants and toddlers

• Talk with child, not at him – encourage conversational turns by asking questions and responding to child’s statements and interest

• Talk at length about past experiences: ‘remember we went to grandma’s birthday party: who was there, what happened,’ etc. Use more elaborate descriptions to elicit questions.

• Use a positive tone; avoid relying on commands and directives • Use words in context to reinforce their meaning: pan, bowl,

measuring cup, spices, rolling pin, whisk, etc. while baking with a child helps connect vocabulary words and concepts.

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What Can Help?Both at School and at Home :

• Reading. How often does reading occur in Singaporean preschool classrooms?– Ideal is at least daily. US and Sweden show declines

• Strategies for reading (from Strickland)– Explain new and sophisticated vocabulary (act it out, use kid friendly

terms)– Discuss narrative structure with children (who are the characters,

what is the setting, what is the problem)– Link dilemmas or situations to child’s own life (what would she do?)– Ask child to make predictions about what is going to happen next– Focus on the printed text – underline with your finger the left to right

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What Can Help?School-Home Partnership:

• Preschool teachers can help parents by explaining the importance of talk for language development

• Suggest strategies to parents for talking to their children

• Tell parents your strategy in class to help build vocabulary

• Explain the vocabulary you are working on in class and ask parents to help reinforce that at home

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Use what’s around you to converse

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• How would you build a conversation around a traffic jam?• What vocabulary would you highlight? What

predictions or inferences? What would you point out?

• Later, can expand on it:

Want to Know More?• http://

www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-30millionwordgap-2011.pdf• http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/the-word-gap• Risley and Hart• http://

fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/Multilingual%20Children%20Beyond%20Myths%20and%20Towards%20Best%20Practices.pdf

• http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/language-gap-study-bolsters-a-push-for-pre-k.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

• http://prek.spps.org/uploads/class_findings_in_pre-k_year.pdf• http://tmw.org/tmw-initiative/inspire a world of good

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