Virginia Mann Founder and Director

Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Univ. of Calif., Irvine

HABLA: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/habla/Email: vmann@uci.edu

Home-based Activities Building Language

Acquisition

The 2000 census targets Santa Ana:

Highest drop-out rate

Largest proportion of Spanish speakers

Some consequences of not finishing school:

Less income: 37 cents for every dollar earned by someone with a diploma

A shorter life: dying on average, 9 years earlier than graduates

Only a 1% decrease in the dropout rate, nationwide could:

lead to 100,000 fewer crimes (including 400 fewer murders) a savings of $1.4 million annually

LA Times 1/29/06

What can be Done?

Improve the schoolsHigh school matriculation relates to

Class sizeTeacher education

Improve the pipeline!Work with younger childrenWork before kindergarten starts

Even Start, State preschool programs and HABLA

Poverty and children’s language environment

A key study by Hart and Risely: Meaningful Differences (1995)

42 children studied in their homes Language of parent(s) to child sampled

monthly between 1 and 3 yrs

Children from welfare families compared to those from upper class professional families, and working class families

Oral Language to Young Children (Hart and Risley 1995)

ParentalIncome

language

Upper middle class

Working class

Welfare

Words per hour

2153 1251 611

Affirmativewords

32 12 7

Negativewords

5 7 11

A culture of silence

A culture of negative words: SHHHHHHH!!!!

Poverty associates with weak language environment Welfare parents use fewer words per hour Each year, this means a child:

in a professional family hears 11 million words in a welfare family would hear just 3 million

By age 5 welfare children have heard 32 million fewer words

The are language impoverished

The Dire Facts

For the child, this leads to:

Weak vocabularies

5,000 word vocabularies instead of 20,000

By age 3:

the spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families

were larger than those used by the parents in the welfare families.

For the child--

Weak speaking and listening skills

Weak cognitive skills

Early math development depends upon language input

Foundations for science and other academic subjects also depend upon language as a medium of input

HABLA Research: A bottleneck in the pipeline Disadvantaged children in Santa Ana begin with slightly lower language skills but soon fall far behind – even in Spanish!

Age at baseline measure

> 42 mo.31 - 42 mo< 30 mo.

Mea

n A

ge-a

djus

ted

Sta

ndar

d P

LS S

core

.

100

90

80

70

At risk

Normal

A Cautionary Note

The danger of ‘greenhouse effects’Makes early intervention a mandate!

Other consequences can spread beyond language

Weak social skills communicating and negotiating conflict resolution

Low esteem Lack of positive regard associates with

personality deviance Lack of a need for achievement

parents have low aspirations and pass on a sense of hopelessness

What can be done?

How to correct the deficit? When to start? What to do? Where to do it? What language to use?

1. Exercise Spoken Language

Encourage Language Use in:Production -- speaking

Comprehension -- listening

Complex vocabulary, rich grammar, not baby talk

2. Enrich the Literacy Environment

Use children’s books and share reading activities to expose children to:

Complex Vocabulary Stories SongsNursery Rhymes

Engage in dialogic reading i.e. having a two-way conversation around a book

3. Develop ‘Phonological

Awareness’Readers do more than speak a languagethey appreciate the sounds within words as something separate from meaningWhat is a ‘long word’? snake or caterpillar

What two words start with the same sound? cat, dog, cup

Realizing that letters stand for phonemes is an important part of what reading the English alphabet is all aboutUsing letters to write morphemes is also very critical but plays more of a role for children beyond grade 3

Examples of phonological awareness activities:

Word play that involves comparing identifying, and manipulating ‘sounds’ within words

Nursery rhymes and poems (these compare and manipulate rhyming words and words that start with the same sounds)

Word games (E.g. ‘Willowby-wallaby’; these often manipulate phonemes)

Learning letter names and sounds (these identify phonemes)

Make it age appropriate! Make it age appropriate! Mastering Phonological Awareness takes Mastering Phonological Awareness takes timetime

How to achieve these three strategies ?

Two new programs at UCI:

Home-based Activities Building Language Acquisition

School-based mentoring for language enrichment

HABLA’s Answer:Replicating some practices of the “Parent-Child

Home Program” :

Provide two years of home visits, twice per week for a total of 46 weeks

Increase verbal interaction between parents and their 2-4 year old children

Use easily learned, fun methods

Give books and toys that stay in the home

The PCHP Philosophy:

Help parents realize their role as children’s first and most important teachers

Coach parents to provide positive reinforcement, using developmentally appropriate materials that will engender higher self esteem

HABLA’s 3 innovations to PCHP:

Use SPANISH, the language of the home, and

supply high quality materials in that language

Use culturally appropriate mentors as

coaches and role models to the family

Include activities to boost cognitive

development (math, science) while language

is being remediated

HABLA as Cost Effective:

1 year of HABLA: $20001 year of preschool: $6000An extra year of school: $6000Each year of Special Education: $12,000

Cumulative loss of social capital: PRICELESS

Less income tax, increased health and welfare costs, lost potential

The Home Visitors

Culturally competent Community paraprofessionals UCI students AmeriCorps members

Native speakers of Spanish Trained prior to visits and during service, and

supervised by Site Coordinators: Maricela Sandova Lorena Garcia, and David

Calderon

An HABLA mom who is now a home visitor….

The Clientele

Two-year olds whose parents are: Educationally disadvantaged Financially disadvantaged

Primary caretaker must participate, by being present and involved in every session

Visit 1: parent observes use of book/toy Visit 2: uses book/toy with child and receives further

coaching

One of our Families

Another of our Families

Home Visits

The Toys and Books Developmentally appropriate Colorful and fun Promote both listening and

speaking and hands on activities In the Language of the home With tip sheets in Spanish that are

left for the parents

Some Examples Books:

Where’s Spot Is Your Mama a Lama Our ‘HABLA Rimas’ book of familiar

Spanish nursery songs and rhymes and their English translations

Toys ‘Moody Bear’ puzzle Shape and color sorter

Measuring the Outcome:

Spanish language assessment at program intake and at the end of each year

“The Preschool Language Scale”:

A scaled, age-adjusted measure of receptive and productive language

Available in Spanish or English

Positive Gains for the Children: A “Promising Practice”

Age at baseline measure

> 42 mo.31 - 42 mo< 30 mo.

Me

an

Ag

e-a

dju

ste

d S

tan

da

rd P

LS

Sc

ore

.

100

90

80

70

Without HABLA

HABLA Treated Children, 2001-2005: Spanish Language Ability

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

Intake 1 Year 2 Years524 478 254

PL

S-3

Sta

nd

ard

ize

d S

co

re

New data: HABLA graduates attending Warwick Preschool 2002-2007

Descriptive Statistics

53 20 44 32.72 6.052

53 59 129 90.70 13.588

61 28 59 40.34 7.076

61 71 150 99.10 18.192

50 38 65 49.86 6.334

49 67 150 102.35 16.766

63 1 16 9.10 2.757

63 2 18 8.75 3.126

55 7200 36000 20011.27 6405.088

35

age

total std

age 1

t std1

age 2

t std2

mom ed

dad ed

fam income

Valid N (listwise)

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation

PLS Results for Warwick cohort during their HABLA treatment

Basic Skills in Preschool:Letter KnowledgeHABLA

Spanish English

Basic Skills in Preschool:Mathematics HABLA

Spanish English

Basic Skills in Preschool:Colors and Shapes HABLA

Spanish English

More outcome assessment: Kindergarten at Kennedy Elementary

Parent survey of home literacy activities

The Preschool language scale Spanish at onset of school year

Phonological awareness English at end of year

Parent SurveyHABLA (n=15)

MEAN SDControl (n=20)

MEAN SD

Mother’s Education 8.9 3.8 6.7 3.9Father’s Education 8.0 3.55 7.4 4.77Reading onset (months) 26 13.5 26 15.7Read at bedtime 4.0 2.9 1.0 2.23Read other time 5.6 1.11 1.8 2.2Ask to read 4.8 .41 2.7 1.55Children’s books (number) 5.0 .96 3.0 2.35Teach print 4.6 .51 3.2 1.39Teach read 4.6 .73 2.6 1.42

Spanish PLS-III Total Spanish PLS-III Total Language ScoreLanguage Score

92.7

101.72

88

90

92

94

96

98

100

102

Age

-adj

uste

d st

anda

rd sco

re

Control HABLA

English Phoneme Judgment

51.8%

76.3%

40.8%

64.2%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

Per

cent

cor

rect

Initial Final

Control

HABLA

English Phoneme Substitution

0.63

1.47

0.41

1.26

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

Mea

n Cor

rect

Initial Final

Control

HABLA

Review and Conclusions:Some dire observations

Poverty weak language environments

Weak language environment weak language and cognition

Thus poor children enter school

at a disadvantage

For ESL children: this is a double whammy

weak primary language limits secondary language development as well as cognitive growth

But home visitation offers some promising results

Home environments can improve Parents can be coached to provide

more language and literacy stimulation

This may take a time and effort But produces a real and lasting

advantage for school success

Parents speaking and reading with their

children, children who enter school ready to

learn