Monday, September 2, 2013
Reflection 1: The 30 Million Word Gap, SREs, and the Value of Culture
The Hart and Risley article in essence says that children in higher SES environments have experience with around 30 million more words than students from families on welfare by age 4. This gap in experience continues to widen as children age, and is predictive of the achievement of students.
To me, its worth noting the constraints of the study; as it was a longitudinal study, they needed families that had long-term residence in the area and families that did not mind having researchers come in to observe household interactions every month. This automatically excludes transient families and families where various illegal activities may be taking place (who clearly won’t want to be observed) -- families who arguably offer less support for exploratory and linguistic experiences for their children. This means that the gap may be larger than that found in the Hart and Risley study, and that the ratio of positive to negative comments made to children may also be skewed.
The Fitzgerald and Graves article explains how scaffolded reading experiences can help, in particular, English language learners and how some of these experiences can be implemented. The goal here is that English language learners don't have to sacrifice content-area learning in exchange for reading skills, nor are they sacrificing learning English skills for content mastery in their native language.
The article also talks about how language is a medium for cultural understanding; that learning a new language and syntax means also learning a new cultural outlook. In a twisted sense, one could almost look at families in poverty having their own distinctive culture and language, as evidenced by the Hart and Risley study; and thus we come perilously close to a discussion about the relative worth of cultures in these two articles. I think it would also be interesting to see if the type of gap seen here would be found again in a sister study of children in Mexico, France, China -- anywhere else with a public school system.
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Thank you for bringing to light the fact that the study conducted by Hart and Risely did not include transient families and those that were involved in illegal activities. I had not considered these family makeup's while reading the article. Given your explanation, I believe your claim may possibly be correct in that the gap they describe may be larger than they claim. In your response to the article by Fitzgerald and Graves, you link the two articles to cultural understanding. I agree with your statement that people of different SES's indeed have a different culture and different language with which they live by. In a recent research essay I had written, I had discovered the vast differences in language and culture within our own country. One particular example that stands out to me that would relate well in this context is of a teacher who was teaching in an inner city school. A student asked a question using Ebonics and the teacher stated they would not answer the question unless the student asked using correct English. The student rebutted, "In my house this is correct English." This idea delves into another topic of social justice, however I wanted to point out the reality of varying forms of culture and language within our own borders.
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