Early Indicators Of The Disparity In Vocabulary Acquisition

It is universally acknowledged that vocabulary knowledge is directly linked to comprehension. A student’s ability to understand written text is greatly influenced by the ability to decode words from the text and use these words to construct meaning. Students with larger vocabularies are better able to understand written text. Reading teachers’ primary goal is to teach their students to become proficient readers. At the heart of reading success is vocabulary development and comprehension. Given the concern about the state of America’s education, The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), of 2001, expanded its federal role in education and put in place legislation with goals of improving education of disadvantaged students and closing the achievement

Hart and Risley (1995) investigated what was happening in children’s home learning environment that affected the different rates of vocabulary development in young children. Findings revealed a strong correlation between the amount of experience with vocabulary and parental interaction and children’s language accomplishment acquisition age three. Children’s early experiences with language account for the differences in the rate of vocabulary growth. Three-year-old children of welfare parents had smaller vocabularies than children of the same age of professional parents (Hart & Risley, 1995). As a result, children of lower socioeconomic status will enter kindergarten knowing fewer vocabulary words than their peers in middle and upper class families. The result of the study conducted by Hart and Risley cannot be ignored as it points out the impact of early language experiences on vocabulary and comprehension development. There is also an undeniable link between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. Vocabulary use at age three was equally predictive of language skill at age nine to ten and was strongly associated with comprehension scores (Hart and Risley,

They employ various evidence based instructional strategies and make decisions with the aim of increasing reading success, yet lower socioeconomic groups of students continue to build vocabulary at a slower rate than their more advantaged peers. This has led to the increasing concern about the disparity in vocabulary knowledge between different socioeconomic groups.

The No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 required that children become proficient in reading by 3rd grade and this must be achieved by 2014. The current Race to the Top initiative seeks to prepare students for college readiness and close the gap between students that represent different socioeconomic groups that have access to different schools and different quality of education. Given the disparity which exists between children of low socioeconomic status and their middle and upper class peers and their achievement in reading, the researcher is led to explore the following questions:

1. In what ways is vocabulary related to