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Why is Vocabulary important?
Research says:
Meaningful Differences
By the time the children were 3 years old, parents in less
economically favored circumstances had said fewer different words in their
cumulative monthly vocabularies than the children in the most economically
advantaged families in the same period of time (Hart & Risley, 1995; see
References)
| Cumulative
Vocabulary |
| Children from professional families: | 1100 words |
| Children from working class families: | 700 words |
| Children from welfare families: | 500 words |
Cumulative Vocabulary Experiences
| | Words heard
per hour | Words heard in
a 100-hour week |
Words heard in
a 5,200 hour year |
4 years |
| Welfare | 616 | 62,000 |
3 million | 13 million |
| Working Class | 1,251 | 125,000 |
6 million | 26 million |
| Professional | 2,153 | 215,000 |
11 million | 45 million |
| (Hart & Risley, 1995; see
References) |
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