E-Thesis 25 views 8 downloads
Methods in measuring vocabulary in UK schoolchildren: is there evidence of a vocabulary gap? / Theo Mills
Swansea University Author: Theo Mills
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.69455
Abstract
There is a long-standing belief amongst academics, educators, and policymakers that there is a significant gap between the number of words that more privileged children know and the number that less privileged children know. It is believed that this ‘word gap’ or ‘vocabulary gap’ affects educational...
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Swansea, Wales, UK
2025
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Rogers, Vivienne |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa69455 |
| Abstract: |
There is a long-standing belief amongst academics, educators, and policymakers that there is a significant gap between the number of words that more privileged children know and the number that less privileged children know. It is believed that this ‘word gap’ or ‘vocabulary gap’ affects educational outcomes as well as children’s overall wellbeing (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003, 2006; Oxford University Press, 2018; Quigley, 2018). If we wish to investigate this gap, then explicit descriptions of vocabulary development are important, both as a means of clarifying what a vocabulary gap might actually entail and for ensuring the vocabulary gap is effectively targeted (Durrant & Brenchley, 2019a). This thesis presents a triangulation of different methods which can be used to quantify vocabulary development in children: (a) vocabulary size data collected from a cohort of children in Wales, (b) quantitative corpus analysis of a large-scale naturally occurring corpus of children’s writing (the Oxford Children’s Corpus), and (c) qualitative semi-structured interviews with schoolteachers. The results exemplify the difficulties involved in measuring vocabulary development in school-age children and have implications for curriculum development in the United Kingdom. In the discussion, these disparate strands of work are brought together using a language policy framework. The results are contextualised through a discussion of the vocabulary gap and how it has been imported into the United Kingdom from the United States. Particular attention is paid to critiques (Baugh, 2017; Burnett et al., 2020; Cushing, 2023; Kuchirko, 2019; Sperry et al., 2019b) of the original Hart and Risley (1995) study which gave rise to the idea of the word gap. Recommendations and implications for policymakers and academics are then presented. |
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| Keywords: |
Word gap, vocabulary, first language acquisition, vocabulary testing |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Funders: |
ESRC Wales DTP |