What do you see?
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Thirty Two million words
In Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf writes that researchers have found a gap of thirty two million words by kindergarten as the number that may separate students from impoverished homes from those who have been read to or told stories at an early age (p. 20). All of the research including Gee's theory of primary discourse sets up the notion that children from non-reading families are at such a disadvantage that almost renders them incapable of reading, it is so unlikely that children in poverty can succeed at all. History says that cross hatched lines on stones over 77,000 years old are the first signs of human effort to read (Wolf p. 24). The brain had to learn what these signs were. This is further evidence that our experience is what decodes the ink blots on the page (a term coined from Louise Rosenblatt).
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Thirty-two million words? Interesting. Did they show how they came up with that number? It would be interesting to see where the sample group derived from.
ReplyDeleteI see people looking at each other. I don't know if that was a rhetorical question.
I see two sumo wrestlers about to collide! The match has just started and the look pretty evenly matched. I can't wait to see what happens next.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you got your link working, Its been hard to comment on peoples blogs when you can't get to them.
Reading to children from an early age is so important. In a lot of ways it can help expand and develop a primary Discourse. The more information that is absorbed at an early age allows for us to filter what is going to lead to the important stuff that is going to make up who we are and how we are going to interact with or have transactions with others as we go through life. I will look forward to reading more.
I found this quote to be truly fascinating as well! This indicated only words spoken. I am curious as the increased brain activity when read to and asked questions about their world. I think there is also a significant discrepancy there as well.
ReplyDeleteHello Gretchen,
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't see the correlation between impoverished homes and those who are read to. I think I would have simply said that this different exists between children who are read to and those who are not. It may be true that reading to children decreases with with income, but I wouldn't say it is a given. I certainly wouldn't say that not being read to as a child would leave one incapable of literacy or future success. Some of the most successful people I know were not read to as children. I myself was not.
I see a fight promotion flyer of two unicorns. You know like boxing matches when they take a picture of them in fighting poses facing one another. I love this game.
ReplyDeleteReading to children at an early age is just good business. Developing meaningful experiences as early as we can only promotes strong reading habits and positive association with the act of reading.
I think that impoverished homes, as a general rule, are not as literate as middle class homes. But of course, not always so. And if we broaden the definition of literacy to include video games, television, the internet, I wonder if this deficit will be seen to decrease as technology increases. I work with very impoverished families, and one thing most families will take with them, even as they are losing their homes, is their video games. books: not always so. books are not as cherished as they once were. words are digitized. easy to type, easy to erase, easy to read. books are not. we are a very stimulated society right now, and extremely visual. sitting down and curling up with a good book isnt as common or as comforting as I feel it once was. i'll be interested to see if this book brings up any of the studies that have to do with attention span.
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