Beyond counting words: A paradigm shift for the study of language acquisition

AbstractThe 30-million-word gap, the quantified difference in the amount of speech that children growing up in low-resourced homes hear compared to their peers from high-resourced homes, is a phrase that has entered the collective consciousness. In the discussion of quantity, the complex and nuanced environments in which children learn language were distilled into a singular metric —number of words. In this article, we propose examining children’s language environments by focusing onwhat caregivers communicate to children andhow they communicate it. Focusing on the features of the language environment promotes a more inclusive approach to understanding how children learn and the diverse contexts in which that learning occurs.
Source: Child Development Perspectives - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research