MA X IMI Z E YOU R C H I L D ʼS L E AR N I N G POT E N T I A L:
TALK, TALK, TALK
by Jan Pierce, M.Ed.
G
ood parents know they should read to their children. It’s the right thing to do to help 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 directives, 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.
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,
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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 1960s at the
University of Kansas, conducted by Todd Risely and
Betty Hart, uncovered remarkable information about
the talk/learning connection. This team tracked 42
families for two and a half years, taping
conversations in their homes for an hour a month.
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 the wealthier children had
heard.
What made this study so important was not just
the initial tracking of language spoken in the home,
but also 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 has taken the information in the Risely
and Hart study and given it feet. They’ve made home
visits and added “conversation services” to their
agenda. (continued on page 12)