How to bridge a 30-million-word gap
The idea that poor children are starved for words.
A bookend holds bestsellers in place on a bookshelf at The Book Cellar, an independent bookstore in Lincoln Square in Chicago, Illinois.
Ann Hermes
Thirty million words: That is the size of the 鈥渨ord gap,鈥� the number of extra words, so to speak, that children of affluent parents hear from their parents during toddlerhood that poor children 诲辞苍鈥檛 hear from theirs.聽
The word gap has been found to have serious consequences once children start school. As a recent headline in put it, 鈥淧oor Kids Are Starving for Words.鈥� This issue was the focus at a recent White House , calling for people to address the word gap with the same passion they do child hunger.
There鈥檚 been a turn in the road on the topic, too: A new study released at the conference found that it鈥檚 quality, not just quantity, that matters.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not just about shoving words in,鈥� said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and lead author of the study, as quoted in . 鈥淚t鈥檚 about having these fluid conversations around shared rituals and objects.... That is the stuff from which language is made.鈥�
Efforts to bridge 鈥渢he gap鈥� include, obviously, encouraging parents to talk with their children and also making parents understand the power of their own conversation.聽
The Atlantic noted, 鈥淥ne study found that low-income parents underestimate their power to influence their children鈥檚 cognitive development, sometimes by as much as 50 percent.鈥�
Providence Talks, in Rhode Island, outfits children with devices that record the number of words they hear each day. I couldn鈥檛 find any pictures, but it sounds rather like outfitting baby elk in the forest with radio collars.
The 30 million figure, by the way, goes back to a study by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, published in 1995 as 鈥淢eaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.鈥�
The online commentariat has pushed back. A mother in Louisville crunched the numbers and found that the 30 million breaks down to 32.6 extra words per waking minute of a child鈥檚 first three years. (You can do the math, too; assume 14 waking hours per day.)
Who can spend that much time talking to their kids? And wouldn鈥檛 such parental verbosity make it hard for Baby to get even a gurgle, let alone a word, in edgewise?
Issue was taken as well with the idea that 鈥減arentese鈥� fosters language ability. The Times again: 鈥淸R]esearchers who observed 11- and 14-month-old children in their homes found that the prevalence of one-on-one interactions and frequent use of parentese 鈥� the slow, high-pitched voice commonly used for talking to babies 鈥� were reliable predictors of language ability at age 2.鈥�
A number of commenting parents insisted they always spoke to their own young children in grown-up tones. There may be a little selective memory here; maybe if we had radio collars on these people, too, we鈥檇 know for sure.
If there鈥檚 an encouraging message here, though, it鈥檚 that talk may be cheap, but the power of language is priceless.