Closing the Word Gap Strategies for Speaking with Young Children Dr. Trisha Craig Wheelock College – Singapore September 20, 2014 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
How many words will you hear in the next 10 minutes? Somewhere between 1500 and 2000 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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. Pineapple inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 Lower Parents 382 251 167 Children 297 216 149 Average # of different words per hour Rhino inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE Engineer
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. inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE Train
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE Get dressed
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE Mint 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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE What will happen?
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
What Doesn’t Work? “ 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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
Talk More • Talk More means – Using as many descriptive words as possible – Take every opportunity to use descriptive language Something as simple as a banana at breakfast can yield all kinds of descriptions: Texture: smooth, mushy Descriptors: yellow, brown, spotted, ripe, sweet Synonyms: skin, peel; slice, piece inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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. inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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. inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 motion of reading, literally point out words inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
Use what’s around you to converse • 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: inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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 WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
About the Presenter Trisha Craig is Executive Director of Wheelock College in Singapore. She holds a PhD from Yale University and her work focuses on policy change and analysis, on social institutions, and on the education sector. She is a frequent opinion contributor to Today and the Straits Times . Prior to relocating to Singapore, Trisha headed the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and has also conducted research, done teaching and offered policy advice in countries such as China, India, Thailand, Spain, Germany, El Salvador and more. She is the co-author of The Quality of Life in Rural Asia (Oxford University Press, 2001.) You can follow her blog at www.trishacraig.org Follow Wheelock on at WheelockSpore Or contact her at tcraig@Wheelock.edu inspire a world of good WHEELOCK COLLEGE - SINGAPORE
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