Vocabulary Development - Vocabulary Development in School-age Children

Vocabulary Development in School-age Children

Vocabulary development during the school years builds upon what the child already knows, and the child uses this knowledge to broaden his or her vocabulary. Once children have gained a level of vocabulary knowledge, new words are learned through explanations using familiar, or "old" words. This is done either explicitly, when a new word is defined using old words, or implicitly, when the word is set in the context of old words so that the meaning of the new word is constrained. When children reach school-age, context and implicit learning are the most common ways in which their vocabularies continue to develop. By this time, children learn new vocabulary mostly through conversation and reading. Throughout schooling and adulthood, conversation and reading are the main methods in which vocabulary develops. This growth tends to slow once a person finishes schooling, as they have already acquired the vocabulary used in everyday conversation and reading material and generally are not engaging in activities that require additional vocabulary development.

During the first few years of life, children are mastering concrete words (e.g., car, bottle, dog, cat). By age 3, children are likely able to learn these concrete words without the need for a visual reference, so word learning tends to accelerate around this age. Once children reach school-age, they learn abstract words (e.g., love, freedom, success). This broadens the vocabulary available for children to learn, which helps to account for the increase in word learning evident at school age. By age 5, children tend to have an expressive vocabulary of 2,100-2,200 words. By age 6, they have approximately 2,600 words of expressive vocabulary and 20,000-24,000 words of receptive vocabulary. Many claim that children experience a sudden acceleration in word learning, upwards of 20 words per day, but it tends to be much more gradual than this. From age 6 to 8, the average child in school is learning 6-7 words per day, and from age 8 to 12, approximately 12 words per day.