A Word to the Wise

What are words? Words are how we describe things. We use them to label physical realities such as birds, trees, rocks, or even Games for Educators columnists. We use them to give shape to metaphysical ideas, concepts, and notions. We use them to fix actions, or even the thought of actions, in time and place. We use them to communicate. We use them to think. 

Yes, of course we can think without words, but that’s not called thinking. That’s called feeling, or, depending on the circumstance, a spontaneous reflex to some external stimulus. Actual thought requires words. It doesn’t matter whether the words are in English, Spanish, or Serbo-Croat. It doesn’t even matter if the words are signs for the deaf rather than actual words. Words (and signs) are abstract expressions that allow us to define our reality and to structure our thought. 

So why does this matter? Well, it matters because of a simple and provable fact: the more words we hear, the more words to which we are exposed, the more words we understand, the more (and better) we think. You don’t believe me? You don’t have to. But you ought to believe Betty Hart and Todd R. Risely, child psychologists of the University of Kansas, who in 1995 undertook an exhaustive 10 year study of the affects of language acquisition on the IQ of children. They looked at the differentials between children from middle-class, professional families and children from families on welfare. What they discovered was astonishing. By the age of 3:

1. The children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words. By contrast, children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of only about 525 words. 
2. The respective IQ’s of the children showed a remarkable correlation to their vocabularies: an average IQ of 117 for the children of professionals versus an average IQ of just 79 for those whose parents were on welfare.
3. Why was this the case? Because the size of each child’s vocabulary correlated directly to one simple factor – the number of words that their parents spoke to them. In the professional homes, the children heard an average of 487 “utterances” per hour versus an average of a mere 178 per hour in the welfare homes.
4. What’s more, as the number of words a child heard increased, so did the complexity of the language and sentence structure used by the parents.
5. Finally, not only were there more “utterances” per hour in the professional homes, the “utterances” were different: the difference being words and statements of encouragement versus discouragement. The average child of professionals heard 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The average child of parents on welfare, however, heard 75,000 discouragements and 200,000 discouragements. 

Hart and Risely’s study showed that exposure to lots of words, more complex sentences, and more affirmations had a positive effect on IQ and on later academic performance.

Since 1995, other researchers have built on Hart and Risley’s findings. Some, such as the anthropologist Annette Lareau, have looked at the cultural perspective and found that children from cultures that enforce overt respect of and deferment to adults did less well academically than children from cultures where parents engage children more as equals and encourage them to ask questions and challenge assumptions. Others, such as Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, have looked at the problem from the viewpoint of neuroscience and discovered that the brain’s medial temporal lobe receives direct stimulation from language acquisition and that this, in turn, aids the development of memory skills. 

But what, I hear you ask, has all this got to do with games in education? After all, aren’t we talking about children up to the age of 3? Well, no we’re not. Those of you who have read my earlier article, All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy (see the For Homeschoolers and Parents pages on this site) will already be aware that brain growth does not stop at age 3. Not only does it continue throughout life, but there are other significant periods of growth that occur at ages 6-8, at ages 11-13 (younger for girls, older for boys), and even during our 40’s and 50’s. You will also know that what counts isn’t just brain growth, it’s perfecting the synapses among the areas of brain growth and connecting them to what’s already formed and lurking between our ear-holes. 

And what we need are words. And what better than word games? There are plenty to choose from. Scrabble and Balderdash we all know, but I can recommend to you some that engage and inform in a different way: You’ve Been Sentenced, Sentence Says, and AmuseAmaze being just a few (the latter, he said with a nod to the chair of full disclosure, is published by my own company). If your budget doesn’t run to purchasing ready-made board games, there are word games that cost absolutely nothing. One of these is called The Last Shall be First. The rules are simple. Pick a category (countries, states & cities, famous historical figures, movies & TV shows, anything you like); player 1 names something or someone from the chosen category; the last letter of Player 1’s word becomes the first letter for Player 2 who then has to name another something or someone in the same category. For instance, if the category is Countries, States & Cities, Player 1 might say Detroit: Player 2 then has to name another country, state or city starting with “T” – such as Texas: Player 3 then has to name another beginning with “S” – perhaps Switzerland, and so on. Another free word game is Vacation Suitcase. In this game, Player 1 begins by saying “in my Vacation Suitcase I would pack…” and then names something he or she would pack in the suitcase. It may be something sensible like a pair of shoes, or it might be something foolish like an elephant. No matter what it is, though, Player 2 has to add to the suitcase what they would pack. The trick is, though, that they have to say what is already in the suitcase. So player 2 would say “in my vacation suitcase I would pack a pair or shoes (or an elephant) and…”. Each player in turn has to remember and name what the other had packed before adding what they would pack. 

Such games might seem simple. The important thing, though, is that not only are they fun, they keep us talking and they keep us thinking.

And that’s the word.