It really does pay to increase your word power. In short, those old Reader’s Digest vocabulary quizzes had it exactly right. Studies of the Armed Forces Qualification Test show that the test predicts job-performance and income gains most accurately when you double the verbal score and add it to the math score. observed that vocabulary “is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities.” It signals competence in reading and writing and correlates with SAT success-which, in turn, predicts the likelihood of college attendance, graduation, and the associated wage premium that has been fetishized by education reformers and driven their agenda for decades.īut vocabulary is important even for kids whose pathway to the middle class does not include college. When it comes to vocabulary, size matters. Schools will spend every moment trying to make up for the verbal gaps kids come to school with on Day One, which usually grow wider year after year. In sharp contrast, early disadvantages in language among low-income children-both the low volume of words they hear and the way in which they are employed-establish a verbal inertia that is immensely difficult to address or reverse. Parents proceed, as Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times once put it, “in a near constant mode of annotation.” Verbal parents chatter incessantly, offering a running commentary on vegetable options in the produce aisle, pointing out letters and words in storefronts and street signs.
From their earliest days, these children reap the benefits of parents who speak in complete sentences, engage them in rich dinner table conversation, and read them to sleep at bedtime.
So it is much more than just a dictionary - it’s a thesaurus, a reverse dictionary, and a style guide too.To grow up as the child of well-educated parents in an affluent American home is to hit the verbal lottery. It includes useful related words notes giving guidance on spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and other pointy of usage and illuminating facts about the origins of or connections between individual words or word groups.
READERS DIGEST WORDPOWER FULL
Besides containing the full word coverage you would expect of a large family dictionary, Wordpower presents a wide range of additional features to give you quick access to the word or usage you want. Gathered together in one volume you will find a treasure trove of practical information about our language.Whether you want to write or speak more clearly, ensure that you are using English correctly and sensitively, expand your vocabulary, understand technical terms or slang, play word games, or simply explore the wonderful richness of English for its own sake, everything you need is here. The book in your hands is a uniquely user-friendly new type of dictionary.
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