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!)
