Building Vocabulary
Vocabulary. Vocabulary essentially is a list of all the words that we know. For adults (and children over 12), that vocabulary can extend to an amazing 50,000+ words. We use vocabulary every day to talk about the world around us and get our wants and needs met. We use vocabulary to communicate and without it, we would very much struggle to do so. There are four basic types of vocabulary:
- Expressive Vocabulary: These are the words that you use when you speak.
- Receptive Vocabulary: These are the words that you understand when someone else speaks to you.
- Reading Vocabulary: These are words you understand when reading them
- Written Vocabulary: These are words you are able to use in writing.
How many words should my child know?
Well, that is a fairly difficult question, but we can estimate a child's expressive vocabulary. Keep in mind that typically, people's receptive vocabulary is slightly larger than their expressive vocabulary. Here are some numbers according to the Linguisystems Milestones Guide.
12 months: 2-6 words
15 months: 10 words
18 months: 50 words
24 months: 200-300 words
30 months: 450 words
3 years: 1,000 words
4 years: 1,600 words
5 years: 2,200-2,500 words
6 years: 2, 600-7000 words
12 years+: 50,000 words+
How to Help
Read. Read. Read. Read. I can't reiterate enough that reading is the most important thing you can do to help build your child's vocabulary. Recently, the Barbara Bush Foundation posted on their Facebook page quoting, "Reading aloud is recognized by experts as the single most important activity parents can engage in to develop strong language skills in their children."
"We can model reading, keep them reading independently, and just teach
them more and more vocabulary in a contextualized, functional way
through text and stories so they can connect it to what they know."--Dr. Carolyn Ford
Here are some additional ideas from the American Speech Language Hearing Association (Reference):
- Build on your child' s vocabulary. Provide definitions for new words, and use them in context: "This vehicle is riding on the highway. It is a car. A bus is another kind of vehicle. So are a train and an airplane."
- Encourage your child to ask for an explanation if he or she does not understand what a word means.
- Point out things that are the same or different. Play games incorporating these concepts that he or she will encounter later in the classroom in reading readiness.
- Sort items into categories. Now try to sort them by pointing out more subtle differences between objects (e.g., rocks that are smooth vs. those that are rough, heavy vs. light, big vs. small). Again, have your child identify the object that does not belong in a given category, but now ask him or her to explain why the item does not belong.
- Expand on social communication and narration skills (telling a story) by role-playing. Play house, doctor, and store using dialogue, props, and dress-up clothes. Do the same with a dollhouse and its props, acting out scenarios and making the dolls talk.
- Read stories with easy-to-follow plots. Help your child predict what will happen next in the story. Act out the stories, and put on puppet shows of the stories. Have your child draw a picture of a scene from the story, or of a favorite part. You can do the same thing with videos and television shows, as these also have plots. Ask "wh" questions (who, what, when, where, or why) and monitor his or her response.
- Expand on your child' s comprehension and expressive language skills by playing "I Spy": "I spy something round on the wall that you use to tell the time." After your child guesses what you have described, have him or her give you clues about something that he or she sees.
Introduce New Words
For older children, you can use new words like "frustrated" in place of "mad." When a child asks what it means, you can briefly explain that it is a feeling when you're trying to do something, but can't. Continue to expand upon a child's sentences. For example, if a child says, "I want the dog" ask if they want the big dog, the giant dog, the tiny dog, or diminutive canine, etc.
Read a book that has a humongous hippo or an enormous elephant and discuss other words you know for big like huge or gigantic. You can also build word webs which connect words that mean similar things. There are tons of pen and paper ideas for vocabulary expansion.
Reinforce Words They've Learned
Keep using new words. Talk about being frustrated cooking dinner because the oven isn't cooking as fast as you want. Talk about being frustrated when you have to clean up over and over because the house keeps getting dirty.
You can play some vocabulary games (like hangman, scattegories, etc.) to help reinforce words you've learned.
References
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