Home-based Activities Building
Language Acquisition
Virginia Mann
Founder and Director
Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Univ. of Calif., Irvine
HABLA: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/habla/
Email: vmann@uci.edu

Highest drop-out rate
Largest proportion of
Spanish speakers

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

Improve the schools
High school matriculation relates to
Class size
Teacher education
Improve the pipeline!
Work with younger children
Work before kindergarten starts
Even Start, State preschool programs and
HABLA

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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)
Parental
Income
Upper middle class
Working class
Welfare language
Words per hour
2153 1251 611
Affirmative words
Negative words
32
5
12
7
7
11

Poverty associates with weak language environment
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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

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.

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!
100 Normal
90
At risk
80
70
< 30 mo.
Age at baseline measure
31 - 42 mo > 42 mo.

Other consequences can spread beyond language

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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?

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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
Songs
Nursery 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 language they appreciate the sounds within words as something separate from meaning
 What 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 about
 Using letters to write morphemes is also very critical but plays more of a role for children beyond grade 3

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!
Mastering Phonological Awareness takes time

How to achieve these three strategies ?
Two new programs at UCI:
H ome-based A ctivities B uilding L anguage
A cquisition
School-based mentoring for language enrichment

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

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
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

1 year of HABLA: $2000
1 year of preschool: $6000
An extra year of school: $6000
Each year of Special Education: $12,000
Cumulative loss of social capital:
PRICELESS
Less income tax, increased health and welfare costs, lost potential

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Culturally competent

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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

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Two-year olds whose parents are:
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Educationally disadvantaged
Financially disadvantaged
Primary caretaker must participate, by being present and involved in every session
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Visit 1: parent observes use of book/toy
Visit 2: uses book/toy with child and receives further coaching

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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

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Books:
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Where’s Spot
Is Your Mama a Lama
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Our ‘HABLA Rimas’ book of familiar
Spanish nursery songs and rhymes and their English translations
Toys

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‘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”
HABLA Treated Children, 2001-2005:
Spanish Language Ability
95
Without HABLA
85
75
70
70 < 30 mo.
31 - 42 mo > 42 mo.
Intake 1 Year 2 Years

age total s td age 1 t std1 age 2 t std2 mom ed dad ed fam income
Valid N (lis twis e)
:
HABLA graduates attending
Warwick Preschool 2002-2007
N
50
49
63
63
53
53
61
61
55
35
Descriptive Statistics
Minimum Maximum
20 44
59
28
129
59
71
38
67
1
2
7200
150
65
150
16
18
Mean
32.72
90.70
40.34
99.10
49.86
102.35
9.10
8.75
36000 20011.27
Std. Deviation
6.052
13.588
7.076
18.192
6.334
16.766
2.757
3.126
6405.088

PLS Results for Warwick cohort during their HABLA treatment

HABLA
Spanish
English

HABLA
Spanish English

HABLA
Spanish English

More outcome assessment:
Kindergarten at Kennedy Elementary
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Parent survey of home literacy activities
The Preschool language scale

Spanish at onset of school year
Phonological awareness

English at end of year

Mother’s Education
Father’s Education
Reading onset (months)
Read at bedtime
Read other time
Ask to read
Children’s books
(number)
Teach print
Teach read
HABLA (n=15)
MEAN SD
Control (n=20)
MEAN SD
8.9
3.8
6.7
3.9
8.0
3.55
7.4
4.77
26 13.5
26 15.7
4.0
2.9
1.0
2.23
5.6
1.11
1.8
2.2
4.8
.41
2.7
1.55
5.0
.96
3.0
2.35
4.6
4.6
.51
3.2
1.39
.73
2.6
1.42

Spanish PLS-III Total Language
Score
96
94
92
90
88
102
100
98
92.7
Control
101.72
HABLA

80.0%
70.0%
60.0%
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
51.8%
76.3%
40.8%
64.2%
Control
HABLA
Initial Final

0.4
0.2
0
0.8
0.6
1.6
1.4
1.47
1.26
1.2
1
0.63
0.41
Control
HABLA
Initial Final

Review and Conclusions:
Some dire observations

Poverty weak language environments

Weak language environment weak language and cognition

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Thus poor children enter school at a disadvantage
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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

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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