Vocabulary development
Vocabulary development is the process whereby speakers of language enhance their working vocabularies with new words.
During infancy, children build vocabulary by instinct, with little conscious effort. Infants imitate words that they hear and then associate those words with objects and actions. The spectrum of words that a child recognizes when listening to speech is referred to as their listening vocabulary. A speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on his/her ability to self-express in a gesture-free and babble-free manner. Once reading and writing vocabularies are attained—through questions and education—the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.
As children grow older their rate of vocabulary growth increases. By the age of eighteen months, children typically attain a vocabulary of 50 words in production, and between two or three times as many in comprehension. From eighteen months to grade 1, the estimated rate of vocabulary growth is 5.5 words per day. From grade 1 to grade 5 it is estimated to be 20 words per day.[1]
After leaving school, vocabulary growth often reaches a plateau. People usually then expand their vocabularies by engaging in activities such as reading, playing word games, and by participating in vocabulary-related programs.
The average persons' active vocabulary consists of 10,000 words, regardless of native tongue.[citation needed] Usually, this represents a mere fraction of the lexis of that language. English, for example, contains approximately 600,000 words, established by the Oxford University Press.[citation needed] This discrepancy, however, is partly due to relative simplicity of spoken language to written language. Additionally, one may understand more words than one uses, meaning that one's working vocabulary may not be representative of one's total knowledge of a language.
A 1987 research on native English speaking university graduates found an average vocabulary size of 17,200 base words.[1]
Vocabulary can be improved by exposure to new language information. Exposure through writing is especially effective, for it offers a greater context by which new words may become understood.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jeremy M. Anglin and George A. Miller (2000). Vocabulary Development: A Morphological Analysis. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 131-132, 136. ISBN 978-0-631-22443-3.
