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7 thoughts on “The 30 Million Word Gap”
The gap also extends to our classrooms, where there “should be” no gap since we are all learning a NEW language, right? Well, at least in the Romance language family, and I would assume the Germanic as well, the kids who are highly literate have more cognates to draw on. I was surprised in my more poverty-affected school (in Gresham) that what always seemed so easy for me in French (knowing “sympa” was a lot like “sympathetic”) did not help most of my students…because they did not know the word “sympathetic” in English. Now in my new school, the kids seem to pick up on those connections a lot faster, in general. Because they are highly literate in L1 and even L2 and L3 in some cases.
Actually, this might be more challenging in the Romance languages, because as a French professor once taught us, the level of vocab. represented in English by Latin roots is a more intellectual and less concrete, everyday layer of words…whereas, according to her, our Germanic roots in English are more of the “bones” of the language that were there prior to French takeover of English-speaking lands.
You add a fresh slant on the difficulty of using cognates. We can only take advantage of cognates in L2 if we know them in L1.
I’ve learned to ask, “do you know the word sympathetic in English?” or whatever the cognate is, instead of just presenting it as if they know.
They say “children growing up in homes with parents who are professionals—doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers—have heard an average of 45 million spoken words by age four.”
I am trying to reflect on the difference between that and our talk about the 200 most frequent words.
I thought at first that this was the number of different words, but it must be the total volume of all words heard by age four. I wonder how many we can fit into an hour of class time.
Angel, Do you think they are trying to work around the institutionalization that Illich decries?
I would have guessed that an institutional approach would be, 1) We have a 30 million word deficit problem, 2) We have a solution: Poor students will be assigned to special vocabulary learning classes in which they will learn and be tested on X words per week.
It sounds like this is a program that can be used outside the school involving parents who are not able to read to their children or who do not have the reading mindset to do so. This would allow parents and children to grow/learn together, in much the same way that homeschooling families do. In my mind, this would be an extension of Read-Aloud and FVR/SSR in the classroom.
The institutional critique certainly applies to the government programs that keep surfacing.
Though I am no expert, it seems to me like the 90 minute/day “eyes on text” mandate that many US school districts are adopting tries to address the inequity of literacy exposure at the elementary level. (And of course is a strategy to improve test scores). It’s not just that disadvantaged parents/caretakers are at work for longer hours; there are also issues of parent literacy, availability of print materials in the home, habit/custom, etc.
I have been to tons of homes in rural Latin America where there’s no lending library in sight, nary a newspaper delivered, no books or bookshelves in the home, youngest students aren’t allowed to bring school texts to/from school, (to preserve them). I am not criticizing here – I’m reporting what I’ve seen as an outsider.
On the flip side these rural kids have amazing interpersonal skills, know about nature, crops, animals, whatever livelihood their family makes. There is a strong sense of community and family. Music is woven through many people’s everyday lives, there are regular live performances/dances on the weekends. Music blasting on the (highly decorated) public bus!
Yes, literacy and extensive reading expands vocabulary and can widen world knowledge. There shouldn’t be an either/or books & reading or not. But our (US) intense (and often premature – insisting that kindergartners read-goes against all the research!) focus on literacy comes at a cost.
Sadly, many of our students who come from families who do not read often, also have very little personal interaction with the adults in the home. Our families have not grown to value that very precious gift of time and language shared.
with love,
Laurie