Today's newspaper carried an article about language deficiencies in elementary school children in New York City. I had heard these statistics before, but am always amazed by them. The article summarizes research showing, "Children of professionals were, on average, exposed to approximately 1,500 more words hourly than children growing up in poverty. This resulted in a gap of more than 32 million words by the time the children reached the age of 4." I remember being given the advice as a new mother that the best thing I could do for my kids was to talk to them. An elementary school teacher in our rural area once told me that she had trouble explaining the term "escalator" to some of her students. I once had to explain what an "apartment building" was to my own son.
The import of this really hit me last week when I gave an exam in my college research methods course. I had several students ask me to define the words, "ambivalence," "frail," and "implications." I'm glad they asked, but it showed me the barriers that students face long after elementary school.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/nyregion/for-poor-schoolchildren-a-poverty-of-words.html?smid=pl-share
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