THE EFFECTS OF NUTRITION ACTIVITIES ON CHILDREN'S VOCABULARY
The research problem examined in this study involved an assessment of whether diverse nutrition-related educational activities (e.g. songs, games, stories, etc.) resulted in the vocabulary improvement of a small sample (N=3) of eighth grade students enrolled in the Afterschool Youth Nutrition Program.
Language is a wondrous thing--it has been said that language is what makes man Man. It follows that a language deficit may make man less than a man. (p.249)
Although Lerner was discussing language deficits related to neurobiological anomalies and dysfunctions, it can be noted that several other factors affect children's acquisition and development of language (e.g. heredity, environment, amount of verbal parent-child interaction, and so forth) One factor that is directly related to a child's ability to acquire and use language is the state of the child's health, and this factor is, in turn, directly related to nutrition (Williams & Caliendo, 1984).
It seems reasonable, therefore, to state that factors which elevate children's nutritional levels should also be associated with elevations in children's language ability. This study was designed to investigate this possibility by examining nutritional educational activities for their effects on children's vocabulary growth. The assumption was that by elevating children's nutritional habits as well as exposing them to new words in the form of concepts related to nutrition, nutrition-related educational activities would lead to vocabulary growth.
To place the undertaken study in context, this section of the report reviews the pertinent literature. The three areas of research that were examined consisted of: (1) studies related to children's vocabulary learning; (2) studies of children's nutritional development and health and the relationship of these variables to language learning; and (3) publications serving as...