13 September 2023

Vocabulary Development

By Natalie Herb – Director of Therapy at Bellavista School

We think in language and imagery. The risk of limited word knowledge can mean a reduced understanding of basic subject matter. It becomes difficult to formulate strong imagery, comprehend text, and make inference of what comes next. As a child develops, and moves through primary and then high school, the vocabulary demands increase and academic demands are high. Poor vocabulary can be a hallmark of language, literacy, and cognitive barriers. Early identification of a possible language delay allows for early intervention. This is positive for learning potential and academic success.

Vocabulary development starts from birth where an infant will show a startle response to sound and be quieted by the human voice. At about 2 - 3 months of age, an infant will ‘coo’ - this is the production of some vowel sounds. They will respond to speech and smile at the speaker. Babbling strings of syllables that vary in pitch and loudness, and are not yet attached to meaning, starts from about 4 - 6 months. A marked milestone is from 10 months - 1 year when 1 - 2 words are spoken by a child spontaneously, and social gestures emerge, such as waving goodbye. A child will recognise familiar people when named, and receptively start to identify their own body parts. At about 15 months, a child will produce 5 - 10 words (mostly nouns) and by 18 months, 20 words are articulated meaningfully. They also start to use their word bank in 1 - 2 phrases. At this stage, a child is also marked to follow simple directions. From about two years of age, receptively, there is comprehension to ‘yes/no’ questions. Expressively, prepositions, regular plurals and phrases expand into incomplete sentences and by 3 years and 3 - 4 words generally make up their sentence. By the age of 5 years, word knowledge escalates to about 2500 words in their repertoire. Comparatives are employed e.g., small, smaller, and conjunctions start to be incorporated to form grammatically complete sentences. From 5 years, 8 words are formulated into sentences with irregular plurals and past tense verbs applied. Pronouns and prepositions are mostly accurate, and there’s an understanding of time sequences. These milestones are a guide in early identification and intervention.

Most vocabulary is acquired indirectly through daily conversations, oral language experience with adults or other children, listening to adults read to them, or reading extensively on their own; but vocabulary must also be taught directly.

At school and home there are quick wins to build word knowledge intentionally. Develop vocabulary through word relatedness: categories, antonyms and synonyms, analogies, semantic absurdities, narratives, and morphology.

Categorisation is a way of ordering and organising concepts. To assist with carryover and ‘stickability’ of vocabulary, pre-teach theme vocabulary appropriate to the subject or theme. Meaning should be made explicit through discussion and application. Semantic mapping, i.e., mind mapping.

Antonym and synonym knowledge yields better understanding of the relationship between words. Antonyms are words of opposite meaning and synonyms are words similar in meaning. Explicit antonym and synonym instruction, pictorial or written, allows children opportunity for vocabulary to settle into memory. Word fluency is facilitated.

Semantic absurdities draw on a process of comparison. Word knowledge around analysis, criteria and core linguistic concepts are explored. This builds comprehension for complex concepts.

Morphology is the smallest possible unit of meaning in language and can be whole words, parts of words, or single phonemes. Understanding of morphemes enhances rapid word recognition when reading, spelling and independent discovery of word meaning. There are two types of morphemes: free and bound morphemes. Free morphemes are stand alone, for example, nouns, articles, and pronouns. Bound morphemes are meaningful units. Examples of bound morphemes are prefixes, non- and inter-, and suffixes, such as -ed, -s, ly.  Establishing awareness about syllables and phonemes in a word develops morpheme awareness, as would identifying prefixes and suffixes. Word building, proofreading, correcting miss-spellings, completing words in a cloze passage, for example, filling in the missing blanks with either -able or -ible, are useful activities to mediate word knowledge.

Narratives, reading, reading with ‘the ear’, for example, using AudiBooks, is a vehicle for vocabulary development and presents rich vocabulary in context. Further, it is a platform for dialogue and questions about book related vocabulary and allows for multiple exposure to rich vocabulary presented in a theme.

Exposure to categorisation, antonyms and synonyms, semantic absurdities, morphology instruction and narratives are a few key quick, start today wins for vocabulary development.

In my experience, as a child moves through their journey, words have the power to create a colourful map. For more information, visit www.bellavista.org.za

About Bellavista SHARE

Bellavista S.H.A.R.E. is the Education Resource Centre of Bellavista School, an independent school in Johannesburg that is widely regarded as a centre of excellence in the field of remedial education. With the Bellavista S.H.A.R.E initiative, the school harnesses the collective capacity it holds within its own staff to improve the quality of educational delivery in Southern Africa by sharing its wealth of professional knowledge, experience, and collective expertise with the community of educators and health professionals working with children in the region. 

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