BBC NEWS | UK | Education | UK's Vicky Pollards 'left behind'

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | UK's Vicky Pollards 'left behind':

"Britain's teenagers risk becoming a nation of 'Vicky Pollards' held back by poor verbal skills, research suggests.

And like the Little Britain character the top 20 words used, including yeah, no, but and like, account for around a third of all words, the study says.

Lancaster University's Professor Tony McEnery who conducted the research said vocabulary size was defined early on.

His study of blogs, questionnaires and speech found teenagers used half the words of average 25 to 34-year-olds."