Jan Pierce, M. Ed.
Everyone talks about the benefits of parents reading to their children. It helps them gain reading
readiness skills.
But did you know that talking to children is equally
important in getting them ready for learning? It’s true. Talking to children
from the day they’re born and gradually leading them into two-way conversations
about their everyday world can mean the difference between success and failure
in learning.
My husband and I both grew up in lower middle-class
families. Children were loved but expected to stay quiet during adult
conversation. And the conversations were mainly about practical things like the
work to be done or what we’d watch on television that night. When our parents
spoke to us the words were usually directive, as in “Eat your peas” or “Don’t
hit your sister.”
Luckily for my husband, he lived with his elementary
teacher grandmother for the first ten years of his life. She did all the right
things: she fed him good, nutritious food, taught him correct grammar, and
instilled in him a love for learning about the world—the stars, trees, flowers,
birds, animals and more. She shared her knowledge with him and never stopped
believing in him even though he was a “late bloomer” in school. She took the
time to talk with him.
READ MORE: Super Vocabularies = Successful Students
And me. Thank God, my mother was a talker. My father
was a quiet man, but my mother more than made up for that. She didn’t speak to
my brother and me with the expectation of hearing our responses, but at least
she talked a blue streak, and we learned a lot of vocabulary. She had a sense
of humor that lent itself to plays on words. She wrote little poems for office
parties and family gatherings. She was a verbal whiz. In turn, I learned to
love words.
So what, exactly, is the ideal home environment for
later learning successes? Studies on key elements in children who learn quickly
and do well in school clearly show that a home rich in talk is one of the
essentials to later learning. Interestingly, the number of words spoken to
children in a home increases with socio-economic status. The higher the
education level of the parents, the more they engage in speaking to their
children. And the quality of the language is higher, moving from only directive
or disciplinary words to asking questions and talking about feelings, thoughts,
goals, relationships ,and the like.
A landmark study begun in the 1960’s at the University
of Kansas conducted by Todd Risely and Betty Hart uncovered remarkable
information about the talk and learning connection. This team tracked 42
families by taping conversation in their homes an hour a month for two and a
half years. The results were surprising. Low income children heard an average
of 600 words per hour, working class children heard about 1200 and the children
of professionals heard approximately 2100 words per hour. By age three the
poorer children had heard thirty million fewer words than wealthier children.
What made this study so important was not just the
initial tracking of language spoken in the home, but the later follow-ups on
these children and their performance in school. The children from language-rich
homes were more successful learners and scored higher on IQ tests. The exciting
thing was that when a lower income home did record more talking to children,
those children also scored higher and did better in school. That’s good news
because talk is free.
In Providence, Rhode Island a group of city caseworkers
took the information in the Risely and Hart study and gave it feet. They made
home visits and added “conversation services” to their agenda. They provided
recording devices to families and encouraged them to speak more to their
children. With practice, the quantity and the quality of parent and child interactions
increased. Parents were taught to praise their children and to respond to their
child’s language with more information, (Doggy? Yes, that’s a brown doggy.) and
generally raise the number of verbal interactions throughout the day.
What does all this information mean for your home
learning environment?
You can give your child a boost in language learning.
Much of the language experience can take place while reading to your child. Books
lend themselves to many forms of language experience and you can begin the day
your baby is born. Singing songs, reciting nursery rhymes, engaging in word
games such as How Big is Baby? Soooo Big. All of these provide rich learning
for your child.
Talk to your child throughout the day. With older
children make it a point to ask questions that are open-ended. What is your
favorite color? Why are you feeling happy, angry, afraid? What was the best thing
that happened today? Take opportunity to praise your child appropriately.
(You’re right, that is a dinosaur. Can you find another one?) You respond to
their speech and add a bit more.
If you grew up in a home that didn’t do a lot of
talking, you might find it a stretch to add to the number of words spoken to
your children. But know that words are free, and you are doing a wonderful
service to your child’s language awareness and future learning success. So
talk, talk, talk—your child will benefit from it.
Jan
Pierce, M.Ed., is a retired teacher and a writer. She is the author of Homegrown Readers: Simple Ways to Help Your
Child Learn to Read. Find her at www.janpierce.net.