Breaking Down Language-Vocabulary

It is important to your child’s development of language to encourage them to learn new words, or vocabulary.

Breadth - defined as how many words you know
Most 2 ½ year olds have 500+ words, 3 year olds learn more than 6 new words a day, and most 6 year olds have about 6,000 words (10,000 if you count plurals, past tenses, etc.)

Speed - how fast you can get to words that you know

Depth - how much you know about words that you know

Words that are in a prescooler’s environment include letters, numbers, colors, shapes, words about time, routines of the school day, words about play, behavior, words about books, etc.

In a study done by Tabors, Beals, and D.E. & Wiezman called “You know what oxygen is?” Learning New Words at Home, researchers studied the vocabulary that children are exposed to in different settings. They also looked at the relationship between vocabulary exposure at home and receptive vocabulary scores in kindergarten. The suggestions that came out of the study in order to help your child gain a wider breadth of vocabulary were:

• don’t be afraid to use unfamiliar words around children;
• consider how you use new words to give information to help the child build meaning
• use books to build vocabulary by talking about the book and its rare words, not “just” reading
• talk to your child about their surroundings when they are in a new place

Next we will look at another aspect of language that has four structures: phonology, morphology, and syntax and semantics.

References:
Griffin, P. (2012). Class 3 Vocabulary [Power Point Slides] Retrieved from online.

Tabors, P. O., Beals, D. E. & Weizman Z. O. (2001). "You know what oxygen is?" Learning new words at home. In Dickinson, D. K. & Tabors, P. O. (Eds.), Beginning literacy with language: Young children learning at home and school (pp. 93-110). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Retrieved from group presentation.