Language skills in student essays: social disparities and later educational attainment

Author:
Maximilian Weber Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Search for other papers by Maximilian Weber in
Current site
Google Scholar Close
Article Category:
Research Article
Copyright:
© Author 2022
Online Publication Date:
01 Jun 2021
Pages:
239–261
Publisher:
Bristol University Press
Volume/Issue:
Volume 13: Issue 2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1332/175795921X16244506861047
Restricted access
Get eTOC alerts
Rights and permissions Cite this article
Buy article/chapter (
GBP  £25.00
)

This article examines the role of language skills in socially stratified educational attainment. Using essays written at the age of 11 in a large British cohort study, the National Child Development Study (NCDS), two measures of written language skills are derived: lexical diversity and the number of spelling and grammar errors. Results show that participants from the lower social strata misspelt more words and used a smaller variety of words in their essays than more socially privileged cohort members. Those language skills mediate part of the association between social origin and the highest level of educational attainment achieved. An even higher mediation of about half can be observed if standardised test measures for verbal and non-verbal cognitive abilities are included in the model. The models show that language skills mediate the social origin effect on educational attainment by about a quarter.

  • Becker, B. (2011) Social disparities in children’s vocabulary in early childhood: does Pre-school education help to close the gap?, The British Journal of Sociology, 62(1): 69–88. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01345.x

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bernstein, B. (1961) Social structure, language and learning, Educational Research, 3(3): 163–76. doi: 10.1080/0013188610030301

  • Bernstein, B. (1971) Class, Codes and Control. Volume I: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language, London: Routledge & Paul.

  • Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control, Volume III: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions, London: Routledge & Paul.

  • Betthäuser, B.A., Bourne, M. and Bukodi, E. (2020) Understanding the mobility chances of children from Working-class backgrounds in Britain: how important are cognitive ability and locus of control?, The British Journal of Sociology, 71(2): 349–65. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12732

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Blau, P.M. and Duncan, O.D. (1967) The American Occupational Structure, New York: Wiley. https://hds.hebis.de/ubffm/Record/HEB034667288. 

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Boudon, R. (1974) Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society, New York: Wiley.

  • Bourdieu, P. (1977) The economics of linguistic exchanges, Social Science Information, 16(6): 645–68. doi: 10.1177/053901847701600601

  • Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.C. and de Saint Martin, M. (1994) Academic Discourse, R. Teese (trans) Cambridge: Polity.

  • Bourne, M., Bukodi, E., Betthäuser, B. and Goldthorpe, J.H. (2018) ‘Persistence of the social’: the role of cognitive ability in mediating the effects of social origins on educational attainment in Britain, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 58: 11–21.  doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2018.09.001

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Breen, R. and Karlson, K.B. (2014) Education and social mobility: new analytical approaches, European Sociological Review, 30(1): 107–18. doi: 10.1093/esr/jct025

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bukodi, E. (2017) National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study Educational Qualifications Histories, 1981–2009 [data collection], London: University of London, Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8127-1.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bukodi, E. and Goldthorpe, J.H. (2013) Decomposing ‘social origins’: the effects of parents’ class, status, and education on the educational attainment of their children, European Sociological Review, 29(5): 1024–39. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcs079

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bukodi, E., Erikson, R. and Goldthorpe, J.H. (2014) The effects of social origins and cognitive ability on educational attainment: evidence from Britain and Sweden, Acta Sociologica, 57(4): 293–310. doi: 10.1177/0001699314543803

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Centre for Longitudinal Studies (2018) National Child Development Study: ‘Imagine you are 25’ Essays (Sweep 2, Age 11), 1969 [data collection], UK Data Service SN 8313, London: University of London, Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8313-1.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Chávez Juárez, F. (2012) TTESTTABLE: Stata Module to Compute Differences in Means by Groups Including the T-test, Statistical Software Components S457401, Boston, MA: Boston College Department of Economics, revised 15 Feb 2015, https://econpapers.repec.org/software/bocbocode/s457401.htm.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Claessens, A., Duncan, G. and Engel, M. (2009) Kindergarten skills and Fifth-grade achievement: evidence from the ECLS-K, Economics of Education Review, 28(4): 415–27. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.09.003

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (2018) CLOSER: National Child Development Study Cross-cohort harmonised data [data collection],  UK Data Service, SN: 8342, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8342-1.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Connelly, R. and Gayle, V. (2019) An investigation of social class inequalities in general cognitive ability in two British birth cohorts, The British Journal of Sociology, 70(1): 90–108. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12343

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Dämmrich, J. and Triventi, M. (2018) The dynamics of social inequalities in Cognitive-related competencies along the early life course – a comparative study, International Journal of Educational Research, 88: 73–84.  doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2018.01.006

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Deák, G.O. (2014) Interrelations of language and cognitive development, in P. Brooks and V. Kempe (eds) Encyclopedia of Language Development, Los Angeles: Sage, pp 284–91.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Durham, R.E., Farkas, G., Hammer, C.S., Tomblin, J.B. and Catts, H.W. (2007) Kindergarten oral language skill: a key variable in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 25(4): 294–305. doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2007.03.001

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Erikson, R. (2016) Is it enough to be bright? Parental background, cognitive ability and educational attainment, European Societies, 18(2): 117–35. doi: 10.1080/14616696.2016.1141306

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ermisch, J. (2008) Origins of social immobility and inequality: parenting and early child development, National Institute Economic Review, 205(1): 62–71. doi: 10.1177/0027950108096589

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Fernald, A., Marchman, V.A. and Weisleder, A. (2013) SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months, Developmental Science, 16(2): 234–48. doi: 10.1111/desc.12019

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gilkerson, J., Richards, J.A., Warren, S.F., Oller, D.K., Russo, R. and Vohr, B. (2018) Language experience in the second year of life and language outcomes in late childhood, Pediatrics, 142(4): 1–11.  doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-4276

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gregg, P. (2012) Occupational Coding for the National Child Development Study (1969, 1991–2008) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (1980, 2000–2008) [data collection], UK Data Service SN 7023, London: University of London, Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7023-1.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Grenfell, M. (2011) Theory, in M. Grenfell (ed) Bourdieu, Language and Linguistics, London: Continuum, pp 37–63.

  • Hart, B. and Risley, T.R. (1995) Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hawkes, D. and Plewis, I. (2006) Modelling Non-response in the National Child Development Study, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 169(3): 479–91. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-985X.2006.00401.x

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hoff, E. (2003) The specificity of environmental influence: socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech, Child Development, 74(5): 1368–78. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00612

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jackson, M., Erikson, R., Goldthorpe, J.H. and Yaish, M. (2007) Primary and secondary effects in class differentials in educational attainment: the transition to A-level courses in England and Wales, Acta Sociologica, 50(3): 211–29. doi: 10.1177/0001699307080926

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jann, B. (2014) Plotting regression coefficients and other estimates, Stata Journal, 14(4): 708–37. doi: 10.1177/1536867X1401400402

  • Karlson, K.B. and Holm, A. (2011) Decomposing primary and secondary effects: a new decomposition method, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 29(2): 221–37. doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2010.12.005

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Karlson, K.B., Holm, A. and Breen, R. (2012) Comparing regression coefficients between Same-sample nested models using logit and probit, Sociological Methodology, 42(1): 286–313. doi: 10.1177/0081175012444861

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kohler, U., Karlson, K.B. and Holm, A. (2011) Comparing coefficients of nested nonlinear probability models, Stata Journal, 11(3): 420–38. doi: 10.1177/1536867X1101100306

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Korat, O. and Levin, I. (2002) Spelling acquisition in two social groups: Mother–child interaction, maternal beliefs and child’s spelling, Journal of Literacy Research, 34(2): 209–36. doi: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3402_5

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Labov, W. (1970) The logic of nonstandard English, in F. Williams (ed) Language and Poverty: Perspectives on a Theme, London: Academic Press, pp 153–89.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • LanguageTooler GmbH (2021) LanguageTool: Java API.  https://languagetool.org/dev.

  • Lawton, D. (1963) Social class differences in language development: a study of some samples of written work, Language and Speech, 6(3): 120–43. doi: 10.1177/002383096300600302

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Machin, S. and Vignoles, A. (2004) Educational inequality: the widening Socio-economic gap, Fiscal Studies, 25(2): 107–28. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2004.tb00099.x

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Manning, C., Surdeanu, M., Bauer, J., Finkel, J., Bethard, S. and McClosky, D. (2014) The Stanford CoreNLP natural language processing toolkit, in K. Bontcheva and J. Zhu (eds) Proceedings of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: System Demonstrations, Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics, pp 55–60.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McAvinue, L.P. (2018) Oral language and socioeconomic status: the Irish context, Irish Educational Studies, 37(4): 475–503. doi: 10.1080/03323315.2018.1521732

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McCarthy, P.M. and Jarvis, S. (2010) MTLD, vocd-D, and HD-D: a validation study of sophisticated approaches to lexical diversity assessment, Behavior Research Methods, 42(2): 381–92. doi: 10.3758/BRM.42.2.381

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McNally, S., McCrory, C., Quigley, J. and Murray, A. (2019) Decomposing the social gradient in children’s vocabulary skills at 3 years of age: a mediation analysis using data from a large representative cohort study, Infant Behavior and Development, 57: 1–13.  doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.04.008

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Michalke, M. (2019) koRpus: An R Package for Text Analysis.  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/koRpus/index.html.

  • Mostafa, T., Narayanan, M., Pongiglione, B., Dodgeon, B., Goodman, A., Silverwood, R.J. and Ploubidis, G.B. (2021) Missing at random assumption made more plausible: evidence from the 1958 British birth cohort, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 136: 44–54.  doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.02.019

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Parsons, S., Schoon, I., Rush, R. and Law, J. (2011) Long‐term outcomes for children with early language problems: beating the odds, Children & Society, 25(3): 202–14.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Power, C. and Elliott, J. (2006) Cohort profile: 1958 British birth cohort (National Child Development Study), International Journal of Epidemiology, 35(1): 34–41. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyi183

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Richardson, K., Calnan, M., Essen, J. and Lambert, L. (1976) The linguistic maturity of 11-year-olds: some analysis of the written compositions of children in the National Child Development Study, Journal of Child Language, 3(1): 99–115. doi: 10.1017/S0305000900001331

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sahu, S., Vishwakarma, Y.K., Kori, J. and Thakur, J.S. (2020) Evaluating performance of different grammar checking tools, International Journal of Advanced Trends in Computer Science and Engineering, 9(2): 2227–33. doi: 10.30534/ijatcse/2020/201922020

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sawyer, D.J. and Joyce, M.T. (2005) Research in spelling: implications for adult basic education, in J. Comings, B. Garner and C. Smith (eds) Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, vol 6, New York: Routledge, pp 71–112.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Schuth, E., Köhne, J. and Weinert, S. (2017) The influence of academic vocabulary knowledge on school performance, Learning and Instruction, 49: 157–65.  doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.01.005

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Shepherd, P. (2012) Measures of Ability at Ages 7 to 16: 1958 National Child Development Study User Guide, London: University of London, Institute of Education, Centre for Longitudinal Studies.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sirin, S.R. (2005) Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: a Meta-analytic review of research, Review of Educational Research, 75(3): 417–53. doi: 10.3102/00346543075003417

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Spencer, S., Clegg, J. and Stackhouse, J. (2012) Language and disadvantage: a comparison of the language abilities of adolescents from two different socioeconomic areas, International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 47(3): 274–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00104.x

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Spencer, S., Clegg, J., Stackhouse, J. and Rush, R. (2017) Contribution of spoken language and Socio-economic background to adolescents’ educational achievement at age 16 years, International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 52(2): 184–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12264

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Strand, S. (2006) Comparing the predictive validity of reasoning tests and national end of key stage 2 tests: which tests are the ‘best’?, British Educational Research Journal, 32(2): 209–25. doi: 10.1080/01411920600569073

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sullivan, A. and Brown, M. (2013) Social Inequalities in Cognitive Scores at Age 16: The Role of Reading, CLS Working Paper ’13/10, London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sullivan, A., Moulton, V. and Fitzsimons, E. (2017) The Intergenerational Transmission of Vocabulary, CLS Working Paper 2017/14, London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sullivan, A., Parsons, S., Green, F., Wiggins, R.D. and Ploubidis, G. (2018) The path from social origins to top jobs: social reproduction via education, The British Journal of Sociology, 69(3): 776–98. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12314

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Walker, D., Greenwood, C., Hart, B. and Carta, J. (1994) Prediction of school outcomes based on early language production and socioeconomic factors, Child Development, 65(2): 606–21. doi: 10.2307/1131404

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
Maximilian Weber Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Search for other papers by Maximilian Weber in
Current site
Google Scholar Close

m.weber@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Content Metrics

May 2022 onwards Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1791 622 35
Full Text Views 2912 133 0
PDF Downloads 2645 20 0

Altmetrics

Dimensions

Cover Longitudinal and Life Course Studies
Longitudinal and Life Course Studies
An international journal