NEWSWEEK for April 29 p.61 has an article about preschool kids benefitting from instruction in words and sounds as well as just having fun. Sounds good to me. One statistic that startled me was statement:pp. 63-64

"',,,children of poverty start school with a vocabulary of only 10,000 words, compared with 40,000 for kids from middle-class homes."

One statistic that startled me... ~ wwh

"',,,children of poverty start school with a vocabulary of only 10,000 words, compared with 40,000 for kids from middle-class homes." - Newsweek

If true, bill, it is not only startling but heartbreakingly sad and scary too.
We can only hope and pray that they catch up fast.

I'll bet the middle class kids are, as a rule, read to and the kids of poverty aren't.

Wow. That sounds unbelievable. Are you sure you got the numbers right?

I guess I would be surprised if there were high school students that had functional vocabularies in the 10s of thousands of words.


k

I don't doubt the 4:1 ratio, but, like FF, I can't believe the numbers are so high.

post-edit:
I tried to find the story on-line but it's now part of Newsweek's archives so you gotta pay to retrieve. Which I'm not gonna do. I'll look for it tomorrow at the library.

I wish the article had identified source of those figures, but it did not. I think four thousand sounds more likely for middleclass kids. I haven't any idea where to get accurate data.

the number sounds about right.. a 6th grade reader has a vocabulary of about 60,000 words.. about the same as a tabloid paper.. (the NY comparison is usually the NY daily news) the NY times has only a slightly higher leval, 80,000 words.. and this is a 12th grade vocabulary..

poor children get off to a poor start, and since the average person only double their vocabulary in 12 years of schooling.. starting out so far behind make it hard for kids to keep up.. they have to show a 500% increase, just to get to a 6th grade reading level, and middle class kids only have to show a 50% increase.. its an almost imposible hurdle!

its not just being read to, its general adult vocabulary, and PBS vs. commercial TV, and lots of other factors. even something as simple as a 64 crayon box of crayons--vs an 8 pack opens up a child to the idea of more colors than red,orange, yellow, green, blue and purple..

you can learn the color peacock-- and its just a name.. until you go to the zoo, and see a beautiful bird, with a head and back feathers of a dark, slightly greenish blue- peacock blue! and now the word peacock has two meanings.. or maybe, you never learn peacock, and never get to the zoo, and you life is drabber.

i still remembers some words that "opened up" like peacock... (ersatz! i learned it as term for fake cream--"the ersatz stuff" and then one day.. Voila! i realized you could have ersatz cream, or ersatz holly (euonymos, a common easy to grow ever green shrub) or ersatz intellectuals..or ersatz sugar, all of them not quite the real thing!)

After a long exasperating search, I finally found an article that gave a number - 20,000 words by age 6 in middle-class family. You have to scroll way down to next-to-last paragraph:

http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/families_talk.html

Excellent. Thanks for the link.


k

I wonder how acceptably accurate vocabulary totals can be determined. If it could be done at a rate of one word per second for ten hours, 36,000 words could be administered. But nobody could give that many responses at such a rate for so long. But if you gave the subject two seconds, it would take two days.
So, obviously, some type of sampling has to be used, and extrapolated to give total.
But, how in hell can the dependability of the sampling method the ascertained?

There is a hell of a discrepancy between the magazine's 40,000 . and the URL's 20,000.

you could just survey the source the kids are exposed to..
what is the vocabulary of "sesame street"? or Mr Rogers? compared to "scoobie doo"? how much time does the kid spend watching sesame street, how much time does the kid spend watching scoobie doo?

and just watch the parents.. invite them in for a paid study, tell them they might have to wait a few hours, but will have a place for kids to play and will get free lunch.
only the real study is the wait time.. how do they use it? do they talk and play with their kids? pick up available books and read? or do they generaly let the kids play by them selves, and not talk or interact with them?

if they kid picks up a truck, and says truck! does momma say Oh yes, a big yellow dump truck! (and teach big, yellow and dump?) or does momma say "Yes, a truck!" (a positive response, but not one that is vocabulary building-- remember these are basicly good mothers, good people)

at lunch does mommy say "eat your Tuna salad, you like tuna salad!"? (a positive statement) to define the sandwiches? or does she say "Yummy, tuna, with celery, and onions and pickles, with creamy mayonaise! Oh tuna salad is my favorite sandwich.." (a detailed, word rich response)?

no mother is perfect-- and many times my mother had a rich detailed vocabulary.. but sometimes "what's for dinner?" was answered with "food!"-- but in the course of three of four hours, you might see a big difference in quantity of words, and quality of vocabulary.

and if i can think of something like this, with very little background in sociology-- i bet there are even better ways.. and that the studies have been done.

However they figure this and whatever the real numbers are, I think the ratio is believable. These numbers are inexcusable on the part of the parents. I wonder whether there is a difference between the general case of children born in poverty and those born in places like DC where there are plenty of people in poverty, but also free access to a plethora of educational opportunities perhaps lacking in other parts of the country.

I don't think reading to a kid alone is sufficient to eliminate the gap, but it would almost certainly shorten it. I recall hearing on npr a few years back that the trait most common in national merit semi-finalists was that they came from families where people sit down at dinner and talk. (Something like that.) Something indicating frequent opportunities for two-way communication between adults and children.

k

there is something very destructive about modern urban poverty. a study done in rural (mexico? central america?) with poor, but rural people found, parents talked very little to children under the age of two-- (but they talked in general. they just didn't converse with their babies)

once a baby had survived to the age of two, the parents be come much more affectionate, and interacted directly with the child (so many childeren died in infantcy, it was considered illogical to get to involved with a newborn.. young mother did it, but after they lost a child or two, they too, settled down to cultural norm)

and while there was poverty, (or certainly a lack of material goods and cash) families hunted, farmed, foraged, and bartered for food... and while the mothers didn't read to the kids, they did often tell them superstitions (like drop a spoon, and you'll have visitors.) and cosmic stories too, about the stars and the moons, and the kids thrived.. some who moved to decent urban environments (family intact, with reliable resourses,) and sent their kids to school, they kids did fine in school

its not reading (but reading is good!) it is talking, and communicating -- teaching folk lore-- (if not the alphabet), its being around people who see a future. and who have a connection to a past.. a heritage. that makes a big difference.

urban poverty --robs people of a view of the future. the poverty becomes a poverty of spirit, not just of resources.

kids in some countries are still taught the Koran orally, and when they finally get to see it.. its not hard for them to 'learn to read' it. or to read anything.. the mind might be primed for language.. but priming it to learn to read requires learning skillful use of language. (all most every kid learns to walk.. some people become track stars, or marathon runners. )everyone learns to talk.. but skillful use of language.. and reading is an advanced skill requires special effort..

Sorry (well, no I'm not, really), but I disagree with the proximate cause being put forward. Poverty has damn all to do with it. Ignorance has everything to do with it. In Zild there have been an awful lot of dirt-poor families whose children have turned out to be extremely articulate. I'm certain that this is the case everywhere else, too. In as much as poverty may have led to poor parental education, well, perhaps. But at the end of the day poor people aren't necessarily ignorant, and wealthier people aren't necessarily smarter or even better educated. Children's vocabulary will surely be a reflection of their parents' knowledge, not their wealth.

Not that I want to contradict Newsweek, that well-known vehicle for eddicational research, or nuffink.

Dear CK: The grouping of kids by family income was result of where the studies were carried out. There would not have been an easy way to get homogeneous groups. There are ghettos that provide groups, and middle class communities that provide groups.
Who could have been poorer than Abraham Lincoln? Amazing what motivation can make possible.

I still question the validity of those 40,000 word vocabulary estimates. (guess-timates)

I don't think it is just poverty.. but i do think there is urban poverty that involves poverty of spirit, not just of cash. Can one have poverty of spirit and be middle class? sure.. one can have a poverty of spirit and be rich.. but to being poor, taxes all of ones resourses.. and eventually, it takes a toll..

everyone gets blue sometimes.. some of us get serious depressed sometimes.. and if we are lucky, we have a support group of friends and family (and doctors and medications) that help us get past the bad patches. but many studies have shown, the poorer you are (financially) the longer your depressions is likely to last... and the less likely you are to get it treated (or even recognized).

one study done in NY with impoverishd families didn't give them any new money.. but it required adults to come 2 or 3 times a week to counciling sesions. some were group, some where one on one.. some particapants ended up getting prescription anti depressants..

one year later, all of the families involved were earning more income.. so which comes first? depression? or poverty? and how do you break the cycle?

and how good are depressed adults as teachers to young children?

I just got an e-mail from a very bright guy who for reasons unknown to me is reluctant to post in AWADtalk.
I am posting it because I think it has valuable information. I hope he will not resent my doing so without asking his permission.

William Dwight Whitney, The Life And Growth Of Language:

...but thirty thousand is a very large estimate for the number [of words] ever used in writing or speaking, by a well-educated
man; three to five thousand, it has been carefully estimated, cover the ordinary needs of cultivated intercourse; and the number
acquired by persons of lowest training and narrowest information is considerably less than this...

I'd suggest that the capabilities of a "well-educated" man of 1875 were roughly equivalent to those of a "well-educated" man of
2002 regardless of how much the number of available words to learn has changed or not changed. I'd further suggest that the
educational authorities have found ways, over the last several decades, to exaggerate, especially to inflate, just about every
statistic they've ever provided, i.e. of troy's treatment.

Whitney was a Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale College.

troy:
I guess I'm leaning towards CK's view, but I'm not averse to programs, etc, that encourage people to do the right thing wrt their children. I dunno, tax rebates for people near and below the poverty level who take their kids to the museum 12 times a year or volunteer at their school 12 times a year? Extended funding to head start? Intensive propaganda, er uh, public awareness campaign (similar to the anti-smoking stuff going on right now) to make parents understand that they have the ability and responsibility to talk to their kids.

ck:
I recall (as usually it's a vague recollection and I could have misremembered the facts) but I think I recall a discussion on npr a while back about a group of intellectuals that grew up in war ravaged europe just after wwii. They did not have proper schools, paper, books, or much of anything else. But apparently they grew into a group of great intellectuals. (I can't for the life of me recall who these guys were.)

bill:
I'm a wealth of unsubstantiated rumor today. Regarding your friend's comments, I recall an interview E.R. Braithewaite gave concerning students at Howard university where he referred to the misfortunte of students with vocabularies of like 300 (or maybe it was 3000) words. I remember wondering if that was hyperbole.

It strikes me that the word vocabulary is ambiguous and I've heard the term "functional vocabulary." There are words that people have seen or can figure out and there are words that people know and use with ease. It could be that the difference in counts could reflect a difference in understanding of what is meant by "vocabulary."


k

At least the main thrust of the article seems valid, that teaching of sounds and words should be begun very early.

The two women in charge of the local head start said that the first letter learned by most children they encounter is M, thanks to McDonalds. I could see next would come K, for Kmart. Literacy through commercialism.

If kids have to leave home to learn the letter "M" the home doesn't amount to much.

If kids have to leave home to learn the letter "M" the home doesn't amount to much.

It amounts to hoe.

These numbers are inexcusable on the part of the parents.
Well, yes, in general, they are. I can't say with any certainty about countries outside the U.S., but I have a suspicion this pretty much holds true everywhere: most of the people who are poor today come from families who have been poor for generations. They know no other way of living. They have always been on the fringes of society, and believe that they always will be. Only a minority realize that education is the way out. Most of the parents had difficulty in school, are not surprised when their children do, and even if they think of trying to improve their child's school performance, often aren't able to. Not all, but a lot, have the attitude, "Take my child and make him learn; expect no reinforcement from me". Parents who were not read to, or who never learned to read very well themselves, are not likely to read to their own children.

Okay, that was attitude. Now, poverty itself. Remember the three basic needs? Food, clothing, and shelter. When every day brings uncertainty about having enough of any of these, it is not surprising that academics don't even make it onto a parent's priority list. For convenience, I will say that there are two kinds of poor people: the ones on welfare, and the ones who have just barely too much income to qualify for welfare--and in my opinion this latter group is worse off.

The ones on welfare usually have subsidized rent, utilities, and get food stamps and a medical-treatment card.
The food stamps are set to a bare minimum--a lot of peanut butter and macaroni meals. The cash is also a bare minimum, which means clothes come from the charity shops, or the dollar store at best--and their classmates know it.
If a kid comes to school hungry, cold because their utilities were shut off, or still shaking from the fight between their parents, they are not going to be concentrating on their school work. Lack of the three basics causes enough stress to drop one's tolerance level pretty low, usually.

The working poor can really have it rough. They live paycheck to paycheck, and any unexpected expense often means they'll have to do without something--and often, it is something they need, such as a balanced diet, or heat. A car or refrigerator breakdown is a catastrophe. They might well get evicted. These parents are not likely to be going over their children's homework, if they are facing a crisis--which they can be, 'most any day. I still remember this 7-year-old girl who, though I had addressed "What kind of work do you do?" to her mother, responded with wrinkled nose, "She takes off her top and dances on tables." Mom did have the grace to look embarrassed, and said simply, "The money's good".

All of this did not even include addiction. I don't need to go into detail on spending the rent money. I will add a story, however. A school social worker I once knew was so depressed one day; she had done a magnificent job the day before of taking a young mother to the grocery on check day (when the welfare check arrived in the mail), and shown her that it is economical to buy large amounts of meat that's on sale. Then she'd gone home with the mother and shown her how to divide it into meal-sized portions and freeze them. She learned that, the next day, the mother had sold these portions for whatever anybody would give her, so she could buy drugs.

It amounts to hoe.giggle giggle

If kids have to leave home to learn the letter "M"

You don't have to leave home to be bombarded by McDonalds, Dr. Bill.

:Yeah, Faldage. There may be many homes without books, but without a TV it isn't home.

I think these numbers are way off. I read an article on lexicography years ago. The numbers in that article were:

Vocabulary of average high school student: 8,000

...of average college graduate: 12,000

...of average person with advanced degrees: 25,000

...of average lexicographer: 100,000


And the English language at the time was supposed to have included 600,000 words, but I've read since then that it had grown to 800,000 +

Again, I think these numbers are way off in the Newsweek report.

My two cents,
WW

My two cents are on Whirlaway at fifteen to one.

depends on what you call vocabulary. are they the words i know? can read, and understand? or the words i normally use in writing? or in speaking?

before spell check i never made a decision in writing (because i always had trouble spelling decide and it associated words..) so i would opt, or elect, or make a choice.

there are lots of words i know, but until this second, i don't think i've ever written about a carborator.. (a thing in (old) cars, that took in fresh air, through a butterfly valve, and mixed it with gasoline to get it ready to ignite in the internal combustion chamber.-- maybe not a consise dictionary defination, but i do know what a carborator is. so it is part of my vocabulary. but not a word i use very often.. I don't even say carborator that often, and i will say it less, now that most cars use fuel injection!

so which vocabulary are we counting?
words used in speach, in writing or in reading? or all of the words we know?

Dear of Troy,

A person's vocabulary would be the reading vocabulary, which would be by far higher than the spoken vocabulary. In the article I read years ago, I read that a person's spoken vocabulary would be about a third of the reading (or working) vocabulary. Or: (flip the coin) You can divide the reading vocabulary by three and have a good idea of a person's spoken vocabulary. Even in writing, you wouldn't begin to use all the words you could recognize in context in reading. Your lowest used vocabulary, in other words, is your spoken; next would be writing; finally, highest, reading vocabulary. Your vocabulary is your reading vocabulary--you get credit for what you know!

I don't know how many points you get off for mondegreens and gang.

Book regards,
WW

It gave no etymology, unfortunately

That virtual font of etymological information, the AHD, gives
From carburet, carbide, from French carbure, from Latin carbo, carbon.

"children of poverty start school with a vocabulary of only 10,000 words, compared with 40,000 for kids from middle-class homes."
I still question the validity of those 40,000 word vocabulary estimates. (guess-timates)

A wise question. The following by Sebastian Wren, Ph.D. (not further identified) differs from all of the conflicting numbers noted in this thread:

By the time a child enters school, that child has learned between 2,500 and 5,000 words. For the first few years of formal education, an average child will learn about 3,000 new words per year. That's 8 words per day!
.....However, these numbers describe averages. Some children enter school knowing as much as twice the number of words that their peers know. This discrepancy in vocabulary size correlates very strongly with reading achievement. Further, once a child becomes a successful reader, text becomes the primary source of vocabulary development. Thus, as years of education pass, the discrepancy between the vocabulary size of some students over their peers can grow from two-fold to over four-fold."

Elsewhere the same author makes the point more generally (and also gives us a new term): Research has revealed an extremely dangerous phenomenon that has been dubbed the "Matthew Effect." The term comes from the line in the Bible that essentially says that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Over time, the gap between children who have well developed literacy skills and those who do not gets wider and wider. (emphasis added)

The latter article, titled "Ten Myths of Reading Instruction", appear to be very interesting; admittedly I have not read it thoroughly.

[Note for links: The links have characters which prohibit "makeashorterlink" from functioning properly. I omit them, lest your screens go wide. To find them, just google-searches snippets of the quoted language

Here is short link to "Ten Myths of Reading Instruction":http://www.sedl.org/reading/topics/myths.pdf

I agree with author that phonemes are extremely important tool, but disagree with his skepticism about dyslexia having a genetic basis. He didn't say a word about vocabulary.

Number 5 was especially interesting to me, Dr. Bill. It is, in part:
"Skilled reading involves using syntactic and semantic cues to "guess" words..." A man named Ken Goodman did a dissertation on this assertion, which the author says he and a partner debunked--er, disproved. One of the author's sticking points in Mr. Goodman's theory was, essentially, what constitutes a "good" reader.

My interest was caught by this one because I do a fair amount of this type of guesswork. Although not a 'speed reader', I do read fairly fast. If my glance notes that, say, a word of approximately seven letters begins with ri--and ends with --ly, I will likely assume the word is rightly (depending on context), and sometimes I do miss things. When I was helping in elementary classrooms, I saw some kids doing the same thing; they'd make a guess based on the beginning of a word.
I wonder if this isn't partially innate, and partially based on experience. With as much reading experience as I have now, I know that the odds are heavily in favor of a particular word being in a particular place. To use my example, the odds tell me that if I see the phrase, "... and ri---ly so", the middle word is rightly. And I think it is possible, and likely, that some children** see a word that begins with the letter, say m, and think, "Oh, that's got to be that word that I learned the other day that begins with m". We extrapolate for the future based on our experiences: what we know. An example of this came from my son: when he was just learning to talk, we went to the zoo. The first animal we came to was a goat. And to him, every animal we saw thereafter was a goat, so matter how wildly its appearance varied from the original.

As to innateness, I meant something I've posted about before: we seem to be hard-wired so that we remember first things (letters of words fits this post) easiest, last things second-easiest, and have a hard time with the middles. Think of the alphabet, and the multiplication tables.

**I have almost no experience in helping adults learn to read. Does anyone know if adults may be less likely to jump to a conclusion about what a word is?

dr. bill, thanks for the link.

Of the two articles I cited, only the first talks specifically about vocabulary. It notes that children who enter school ahead of their peers (in vocabulary) tend over the years to get farther and farther ahead in literacy.

The second article makes this same point that initial variances in literacy (however caused) tend to widen over the years of children's education.

I have almost no experience in helping adults learn to read. Does anyone know if adults may be less likely to jump to a conclusion about what a word is?

I don't know about adults, but one of the high-schoolers I have in an SAT-prep class does this continually when reading aloud. He seems to follow the "see the beginning and end, guess the middle" approach you mentioned, reading "miserly" as "miserably" and such. I'm not yet sure if he only does this when reading aloud (the added pressure of being "on stage" makes many normally good readers horrible at reading aloud), but it could be a big liability for him on the test if he does it when reading to himself, as well.