LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN FROM LOWINCOME BACKGROUNDS

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN FROM LOW-INCOME
BACKGROUNDS
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I. BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION

• (no stats are on exam)
• In 2006, federal poverty level was defined as
  20,000 for a family of 4, 16,000 for a family
  of 3, and 13,200 for a family of two
• Research suggests that on average, to meet their
  most basic needs, families need an income
  approximately 2 times greater than federal
  poverty level

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National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006

• For children from low-income families, 26 live
  with parents who have less than a high school
  education 35 live with parents who have a high
  school diploma, and 39 live with parents who
  have some college or more
• (no exact numbers on the test, but please know
  the gist of this)

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In terms of race and ethnicity, the following
numbers of children live in low-SES homes

• 27 White
• 30 Asian
• 61 African American
• 63 Hispanic

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According to the Forum on Family and Child
Statistics, 2006
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II. POTENTIAL NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF POVERTY
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When it is dangerous outside
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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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III. SITUATIONAL VS. GENERATIONAL POVERTY
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They have an external locus of control

• Theres nothing I can dowhy fight city hall?
• My future is determined by luck and chance
• Why bother with therapy?

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Situational Poverty
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There is an internal locus of control

• People believe that they can shape their own fate
• They can influence the future by making good
  choices now
• Tend to be open toward intervention

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IV. ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLS OF LOW-SES CHILDREN

• Research has found that SES is more critical to a
  childs language development than ethnic
  background
• The factor most highly related to SES is the
  mothers educational level

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Low-SES caregivers who have little education

• Tend to provide less oral language stimulation
  for their children
• Hart and Risley (1995, 2003) studied children
  from professional, working-class, and welfare
  homes
• They found that in a 365-day year, children from
  professional families heard about 4 million
  utterances children from welfare families heard
  about 250,000 utterances

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Hart and Risley extrapolated that

• In order for the welfare children to gain a
  vocabulary equivalent to that of children from
  working class homes, these welfare children would
  need to attend a preschool programme for forty
  hours per week where they heard language at a
  level used in professional homes

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Other research has found that
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Low-SES caregivers
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Low-SES children tend to have
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V. LITERACY SKILLS OF LOW-SES CHILDREN

• Families may be too poor to buy books
• Parents low educational level leads to less
  reading
• Also, reading style is affected. Research shows
  that low-SES parents use lower level language,
  tell children to pay attention without
  interrupting, and ask very basic, straightforward
  questions that dont require much thought

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Thus
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Many low-SES children

• Have substantial difficulty with phonological
  awareness skills

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VI. CONSIDERATIONS IN ASSESSMENT OF LANGUAGE
SKILLS

• Low-SES children get overreferred to special
  education
• Many standardized tests of language skills are
  biased against low-SES students
• There can be grammatical bias
• Test tasks are often highly decontextualized
  (Tell me everything you can about a bird.

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In addition
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In order to validly evaluate the language skills
of low-SES children, we can use
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VII. CONSIDERATIONS IN LANGUAGE INTERVENTION
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We need to focus on developing

• Vocabularysocial and academic
• Phonological awareness skills
• Literacy skillsreading and writing
• Pragmaticssolving problems verbally, being
  appropriately polite
• Correct grammarmorphology and syntax

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We also need to teach basic safety
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VIII. INCREASING EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS
(teachers SLPs)

• Low-SES students are vulnerable in this area due
  to environmental and physiological factors

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Executive Functioning Involves
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We can help children develop these skills by
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Teach kids to ask
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Help students to think as follows

• The choice I made was____
• The consequence of this choice was____.
• Next time, I could choose to _____.
• I could also choose to____.

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To help students move out of poverty

• We can be caring, involved role models