Building blocks of language

The new research by Anne Fernald,a psychologist at Stanford University,which was published in Developmental Science earlier this year,showed that at 18 months children from wealthier homes could identify pictures of simple words they knew dog or ball much faster than children from low-income families. By age two,the study found,affluent children had learned 30 per cent more words in the intervening months than children from low-income homes.

In the new study,the children of affluent households came from communities where the median income was 69,000; the low-income children came from communities with a median income of 23,900.

Since oral language and vocabulary are so connected to reading comprehension,the most disadvantaged children face increased challenges once they enter school and start learning to read.

That gap just gets bigger and bigger, said Kris Perry,executive director of the First Five Years Fund,an advocate of early education for low-income children.

In the latest data available from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University,28 per cent of all four-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in state-financed preschools in the 2010-11 school year,and just 4 per cent of 3-year-olds.

Currently,17 states and the District of Columbia have policies requiring that third-graders be held back if they do not meet state reading proficiency standards.

Now,with the advent of the Common Core,a set of rigorous reading and math standards for students in kindergarten through Class XII,educators say the pressure to prepare young children is growing more intense.

Literacy experts have previously documented a connection between a childs early vocabulary and later success in reading comprehension. In a study tracking children from age three through middle school,David Dickinson,now a professor of education at Vanderbilt University,and Catherine Snow,an education professor at Harvard University,found that a childs score on a vocabulary test in kindergarten could predict reading comprehension scores in later grades.

The worst thing that could come out of all this interest in vocabulary, he said,is flash cards with pictures and parents making kids memorise a thousand words.

Instead,literacy experts emphasise the importance of natural conversations with children,asking questions while reading books,and helping children identify words during playtime.

Middle-class and more affluent parents have long known that describing fruit at the supermarket or pointing out the shape of a stop sign are all part of a young childs literacy education.

Even in low-income families,parents who speak to their children frequently can enhance vocabulary. In separate research,Fernald,working with Adriana Weisleder,a graduate student in psychology,recorded all the words that 29 children from low-income households heard over a day.

The researchers differentiated between words overheard from television and adult conversations and those directed at the children. They found that some of the children,who were 19 months at the time,heard as few as 670 child-directed words in one day,compared with others in the group who heard as many as 12,000.

Even in families that are low income and perhaps dont have a lot of education,there are some parents that are very engaged verbally with their kids, said Weisleder. And those kids are doing better in language development.

Motoko Rich