Debunking the Language Gap

 

Sometimes research makes its way into the news and media to the point where it becomes a part of ‘what everyone knows’ about. One such headline that arose in the 90s is the 30 Million Word Gap.

The 30 Million Word Gap has received a lot of media attention since the original article published by Dr. Betty Hart and Dr. Todd Risley in 1992. If you are unfamiliar with the 30 Million Word Gap, it is the idea that children growing up in poverty hear 30 million words fewer than children who do not grow up in poverty (Hart & Risley, 1992). The original study was done on 42 families and its findings have been published to be used in many intervention programs and in over 8000 other writings (Kamenetz, 2018).

As you might imagine, the statement—that if we could only increase the number of words children heard, then they would all be able to read—created a lot of turmoil in schools and communities. At the time, it seemed that a magic button had appeared that would solve all the issues of struggling readers in the early grades.

AND – it also promoted racially charged deficit beliefs about students who are have low socio-economic status.

One of the reasons the ‘language gap’ felt like it made sense on the surface is because it’s true that use of and exposure to language is important for children’s development as readers (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008).

However, just one of the problems with the language gap research was that it looked at language through a lens that assumed that one group’s use of language was better and more useful than another group’s use of language. Researchers in the word gap study placed different values on different types of language. For example, they only included talk by the primary caregiver to the child (Hart & Risley, 1992). There are many other types of language that are used in a household – primary caregiver to child, all caregivers to child, and all speech in the environment (Sperry et al., 2018). Families of different social and cultural backgrounds have different ways of talking with and to children, and by only counting one type of speech, Hart & Risley (1992) privileged white middle class cultural norms that were then used to make broad generalizations about families with low socioeconomic status.

Fast forward to 2020, and the 30 Million Word Gap has been highly debated! One study, by Sperry, Sperry, & Miller (2019), examined the verbal environments of 42 children in different socio-economic groups. In contrast to the 1992 study, it was found that social class did not correlate with the amount of words spoken to and around the children in the household (Sperry et al., 2012).

Interested to learn more? Check out a 3 minute review of this topic on NPR: HERE

References

Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1992). American Parenting of Language-Learning Children: Persisting Differences in Family–Child Interactions Observed in Natural Home Environments. Developmental Psychology, 28(6), 1096–1105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.6.1096

Kamenetz, Anya. (2018, June 1). Let's Stop Talking About The '30 Million Word Gap'. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap

National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Sperry, D., Sperry, L., & Miller, P. (2019). Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds. Child Development, 90(4), 1303–1318. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13072