analyze it, talk about it, and make judgments about correct forms (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998; Bennett-Armistead, Duke, and Moses, 2005; Hailey, 2014; Klein, 2014). Young children also use their language in connection with everyday literacy events, such as (with their parents’ help) searching for and clipping coupons, sorting the mail, checking the TV guide for favorite shows, or following a recipe to make dinner—providing an opportunity for researchers and caregivers to observe their ideas about literacy. In these ways, children learn how to “connect life with literacy” (Pinnell, 2018; Morrow, 2008; Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2013). Questioning the 30-Million-Word Gap In order to develop a robust vocabulary and extensive conceptual knowledge, children need rich language input that enables them to understand what objects are called and how they work or go together. Hart and Risely (1999) conducted a longitudinal research study that examined parents’ talk to children among families from varying socioeconomic levels—identified as welfare, working class, and professional families—and discovered dramatic differences among the richness of words children from lower socioeconomic levels heard compared to their peers from middle or more affluent levels. Hart and Risley suggested that children from the wealthiest families heard 1,500-plus more words each hour, on average, than children from economically challenged families (616 vs. 2,153 words each hour). Ultimately, children who are immersed in rich language may hear 30 million more words by the time they enter school than children who don’t have the same opportunities. What’s more, children frommore affluent households are more likely to hear encouraging language used to accentuate the positive and support, rather than discouraging language used to reprimand and criticize. And these essential differences are reflected in the scores of the tests administered to the same children when they are nine and 10 years old.
In recent years, the Hart-Risely study has come under criticism:
Amid growing controversy about the oft-cited “30-million-word gap,” this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley’s (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle-class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18–48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley’s claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low-income children are exposed. We want to avoid making assumptions about children’s language or literacy level based simply on their families’ professional, educational, or economic status. Children arrive at
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CHAPTER 5: TEACH 6 FAMILY LITERACY
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