072: Is the 30 Million Word Gap Real: Part II

This episode revisits the concept of the 30 Million Word Gap concept, which we first covered in an interview with Dr. Doug Sperry (https://yourparentingmojo.com/wordgap/) a few weeks back. After she heard that I was going to talk with Dr. Sperry, Dr. Roberta Golinkoff – with whom we discussed her book Becoming Brilliant (https://yourparentingmojo.com/becomingbrilliant/) almost two years ago now – asked to come back on to present a rebuttal.  We’re going to learn a lot more about the importance of child-directed speech! This episode serves two purposes: it helps us to understand another aspect of the 30 Million Word Gap, and it also demonstrates pretty clearly that scientists – both of whom have the best interests of children at heart – see very different ways of achieving that end. References Adair, J.K., Colegrave, K.S-S, & McManus. M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334. Avineri, N., Johnson, E., Brice‐Heath, S., McCarty, T., Ochs, E., Kremer‐Sadlik, T., Blum, S., Zentella, A.C., Rosa, J., Flores, N., Alim, H.S., & Paris, D. (2015). Invited forum: Bridging the “language gap”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25(1), 66-86. Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is Kindergarten the new first grade? AERA Open 1(4), 1-31. Baugh, J. (2017). Meaning-less difference: Exposing fallacies and flaws in “The Word Gap” hypothesis that conceal a dangerous “language trap” for low-income American families and their children. International Multilingual Research Journal 11(1), 39-51. Brennan, W. (2018, April). Julie Washington’s quest to get schools to respect African American English. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-code-switcher/554099/ Correa-Chavez, M., & Rogoff, B. (2009). Children’s attention to interactions directed to others: Guatemalan and Europea