Here is why building a child’s vocab matters

What was your child’s first word?

At eighteen months, my son said ‘Dad’. We were thrilled and encouraged his baby babble, hanging on to his every pronouncement like it was from an oracle.

At birth, a child’s brain already has all the neurons it will ever have. It doubles in size in the first year, and by age three, it has reached 80 per cent of its adult volume.[i] In the pre-school years, talking with your child is how they build their vocabulary.

I learned French, German and Latin at school. What was I thinking? In my defence, I didn’t know I had dyslexia. All the hours I spent trying to get vocabulary words to stick were torture. I scrapped passes, but my lack of vocabulary meant I never became proficient.

It is the same when learning to read English. A child with dyslexia may decode words, but without a good vocabulary, they won’t be able to understand what they have read.

How to build a child’s vocab if they have poor reading skills

My son Harry struggled to learn to read. Like many children with dyslexia, his spoken vocabulary far outstripped his reading vocabulary.

I was interested in Marie Rippel’s blog post on vocabulary acquisition. Marie is the founder of All About Learning, the programme I used to teach Harry to read and spell. You can check out this post for how we used her resources.

Here is an abridged version of Marie’s post on building your child’s vocabulary, followed by some tips of my own.

Four Types of Vocabulary

When we talk about vocabulary, we are actually talking about four related vocabularies. In order from largest to smallest, they are:

1. Listening vocabulary (words we can hear and understand)

2. Reading vocabulary (words we can understand when we read)

3. Speaking vocabulary (words we use when we talk)

4. Writing vocabulary (words we use when we write)

For younger students who are still learning to read, speaking vocabulary is generally larger than their reading vocabulary. But for older readers who are past the “learning to read” stage and who have entered the “reading to learn” stage, this is the typical order:

There is a high correlation between the four vocabularies. Growth in one area normally leads to growth in another. But is it possible for you to influence this growth? The simple answer is YES!

So, let’s look at how to increase your child’s vocabulary.

Two Main Approaches to Vocabulary Development

Most vocabulary is attained through indirect methods:

• Daily conversation

• Independent reading

• Read-alouds

• Oral discussions

• Movies

Direct vocabulary instruction includes things such as:

• Formal vocabulary curriculum

• Word analysis

• Teaching roots, suffixes, and prefixes

• Concept maps

Both indirect and direct methods of building vocabulary are important, but let’s look at what doesn’t work when trying to build your child’s vocabulary.

Five Common Mistakes in Teaching Vocabulary Words

Does this routine sound familiar?

It’s Monday–time to learn a new list of twenty vocabulary words. The children look up the words in the dictionary and copy the definitions. On Tuesday, they will use the words in a sentence, and on Wednesday, they will complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet or even a fun vocabulary crossword puzzle. On Friday, there will be a quiz on the twenty words. Then, whether they remember last week’s words or not, on Monday, it will be time to start all over again.

Although many of us were taught vocabulary words this way, even the most compliant kids groaned inwardly at this demotivating routine.

Here’s the problem: the list-on-Monday, test-on-Friday approach to teaching vocabulary simply isn’t effective. It does, however, illustrate these common mistakes:

1. Assigning too many new vocabulary words at one time.

2. Teaching vocabulary words out of context.

3. Expecting students to recall vocabulary words after a single exposure to the word.

4. Making vocabulary development a boring topic that kids want to avoid.

And then there is a fifth common mistake:

5. Skipping vocabulary development entirely.

And this is really where the rubber meets the road. Vocabulary that is developed naturally rather than taught using the more traditional method above is much more likely to stick with your child.’

Thanks, Marie. Now I know why my foreign vocabulary words didn’t stick. I had nothing to hang them on because I learned them out of context.

What helps build a child’s vocabulary?

Conversation!

Right from birth, children are absorbing language, and according to research[ii]  the ability to interpret words at 18 months can determine the size of a child’s vocabulary later in childhood.

If you have young children, talk about something that interests them. When they point to something, stop and discuss it. The child will remember words better if you pair them with objects, events, and emotions.

Frequent conversations are especially important for the first three years of life when the language areas of the brain are rapidly developing.

Encourage younger children to engage in pretend play.

Harry had an extensive dress-up box, and I have a lovely photograph of him dressed as a nurse listening to my partner’s heart on his stethoscope. He also enjoyed building complex structures in the sandbox. Chatting with him about what he was doing was a great way to build his vocabulary.

Read and discuss books together to build thier vocab.

A dyslexic child may not want to read, but if you can, read to them. This can be a bonding experience and if possible, keep reading with your child even when they think they are too old for it. We read the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books to Harry as a teenager because he would never have tackled such long stories.

Listen to audiobooks together.

If you find reading difficult, why not listen to an audiobook with your child? You can pause the story to discuss the occasional unfamiliar word, but don’t stop the flow of the story too often, or your child will lose interest.

Teach figures of speech.

Don’t leave it to school to teach your child figures of speech because children with dyslexia need many more exposures to words than non-dyslexic children before they remember them.

An idiom is a common expression that has a different meaning from what is being said. Harry takes things literally, and I had to teach him common idioms. I found the material in the All About Reading books was excellent for this.

Here is a website for picture books all about idioms.

Take a little time each day to expand your child’s vocabulary

As parents, we can forget that everyday moments can make a difference. When your child comes across an unfamiliar word, take a moment to talk about it. See if you can add ten minutes of reading to them or put on an audiobook. When you watch a movie together at home, see if they can find an unknown word. Building their vocabulary in this way will help them crack the reading code.

Speechify is an app that can help dyslexic children improve their vocabulary as it reads online text. Here is my affiliate link.

 

How did you build your child’s vocabulary?

Here is my post about teaching your child to read and spell.

[i] Gilmore JH, Lin W, Prasatwa MW, et al. Regional gray matter growth, sexual dimorphism, and cerebral asymmetry in the neonatal brain. Journal of Neuroscience. 2007;27(6):1255-1260.

[ii] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0012-1649.42.1.98