The average child from a well-off home will have heard 44 million words by the age of 4. Children from poorer homes may have heard only 12 million. Photo / Getty Images
Children from the poorest homes may do worse at school because their parents do not talk to them enough, according to research published yesterday.
A study for the inquiry into primary education led by Cambridge-based Professor Robin Alexander reveals that the average child from a well-off home will
have heard 44 million "utterances" by the age of 4. By contrast, those from the least well-off backgrounds will only have heard 12 million words.
In one of four papers, Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant say this works out at 487 utterances per hour in the better-off home but only 178 in the worst off.
The authors stress the significance of hearing language and engaging in pretend play in the classroom and direct teaching for motivating children and helping them learn.
In a second paper, Christine Howe and Neil Mercer cite research from the United States which concludes that "the amount and quality of the dialogue children experience at home in the pre-school years correlated strongly with their eventual academic attainment".
They stress that they can find no "direct link" between vocabulary at home and academic performance but argue: "It may be that children's social background influences the likelihood that they will spontaneously engage in reasoned discussion resembling exploratory talk in primary school."
This could have an impact on the benefits they gain from being taught in the classroom. The research also highlights the importance of teachers adopting a conversational style with their pupils to get the best responses out of them, rather than relying on direct teaching in front of the whole class.
The research comes 24 hours after a report from the Sutton Trust education charity showed there was less social mobility in Britain than anywhere else in the advanced world. Children from the poorest homes who did well in tests for 3-year-olds were likely to be overtaken by the time they were 7 by children from more affluent homes who did badly in the same tests.
- Independent
