Building strong vocabulary is an important step towards learning to read. Vocabulary development doesn’t just involve memorizing words - it’s about understanding their meanings, uses, and how they relate to one another. A strong vocabulary helps children decode words, understand what is being read, and express themselves more clearly. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what vocabulary is and why it is important for learning to read.

And most importantly, we will share practical strategies for helping your child build vocabulary to support early literacy development.

What is Vocabulary?

Vocabulary is the set of words your child knows and uses in their language. We can divide vocabulary into two categories based on whether we are hearing words or producing words. Receptive vocabulary includes words your child understands while listening or reading. The collection of words they use to speak or write is called productive vocabulary. 

Why is Vocabulary Important for Reading?

Vocabulary is not just about knowing a lot of words (vocabulary breadth). To support reading comprehension, children need to understand what words mean (vocabulary depth). Helping your child understand that words have multiple meanings and can change meaning depending on the words around them is important for learning to read. 

Vocabulary helps improve communication, comprehension, and overall literacy skills. Listening involves hearing words and understanding what those words mean. Reading involves decoding words and understanding the meaning of words when they are grouped together around an idea.

Having a large vocabulary will help your child understand what they hear and read. It will also make it easier for them to communicate their thoughts and ideas when speaking or writing. 

When a child first learns to read, decoding is very challenging. Having a large collection of spoken words to call on helps them use letter-sound knowledge to decode words.

Some words such as said or lamb have unexpected graphemes/phonemes. When a child already has these words in their vocabulary, it helps them land on a word that makes sense as they try out different pronunciations. 

When a child becomes more skilled at reading, they use vocabulary and background knowledge about a topic to help them decode new words. They also use vocabulary knowledge such as suffixes (ed, ing, ly) and prefixes (un-, re-, pre-) to pull words apart into chunks to decode them and understand the meaning of what is being read.

Building a large vocabulary through conversation, reading books, and diverse life experiences sets your child up for reading success.   

How Can I Help My Child Build Vocabulary?

1. Learn Words in Real Situations

Your child learns words best from hearing you speak and then using words to respond to you. Everyday situations such as reading stories together or talking with you about what you are doing or seeing exposes them to new and varied vocabulary.

Providing diverse experiences outside the home exposes your child to new situations and people which helps build background knowledge and learn new words. These activities help them understand how words work and what they mean.

Name unfamiliar items and have your child help you put labels on items in your house. This is a fun way for them to learn that words we say are connected to letters. Learning the alphabetic code is necessary for learning to read, so connecting vocabulary used in everyday life to written words helps build these connections.

2. Introduce New Words

Use complex words when you introduce your child to new experiences and explain the world around them. A good way to do this is to use a complex word in a sentence and then rephrase what you said using simpler words.

For example, you might say, “My new shoes are exquisite. They are a perfect fit and make me feel happy whenever I wear them.” Adding the words perfect fit and happy explains what you mean by exquisite. Exquisite is a word that is not commonly used in everyday speech, but would be found in books.

Reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, with your child is a wonderful way to introduce them to thousands of words that are not used in everyday speech. Jane O’Connor wrote a whole series of Fancy Nancy books that introduce children to “fancy” language without the need for boring definitions.

A child who is read to from birth has heard an estimated 1.4 million more words before they enter Kindergarten, than a child who has not experienced regular story time. Reading books builds a large vocabulary and lays a foundation for learning to read independently. 

Another strategy is to introduce new words that fit into categories. For example, when your child learns the word dog, they might attach words to that category such as: woof, ears, four legs, fur, dog food. You can help them expand the category for dogs by talking about words such as loyal, playful, companion, friendly, energetic, protective, tricks, barking, canine, and loving.   

3. Have Fun with Words

It’s important for your child to have opportunities to practice using the words they learn. The more they use these words during conversations, the better they will remember and understand them. It will also make it easier for them to decode words when reading and use them when writing.

Making strings of rhyming words or saying tongue twisters is a fun way to play with language. You can also read books that showcase words with opposite meanings (antonymns) and play games using opposites. For example: You say hot and your child replies cold. They say up and you reply down. You can also throw in less familiar words by responding with descend and then adding down. 

Telling stories about your childhood or making up stories introduces your child to new words in an entertaining and memorable way. Language changes over time, so provide opportunities for your child to have conversations with people of all ages. The unique and interesting words that a 100 year old Great Gramma uses will help your child expand their vocabulary, while learning that different words can have the same meaning (synonyms). The everyday vocabulary of a toddler or teenager will likely be different than yours.

Exposure to unfamiliar words opens conversations about language and multiple meanings of words.   

Summary

Acquiring a large vocabulary will help your child become a strong reader. Vocabulary is not all about memorizing words - it’s about understanding what words mean, how to use them, and how they are related to each other. 

When a child has a large vocabulary of words that they understand the meaning of, it helps them decode unfamiliar words. It also helps them understand what is being read and clearly express their own ideas. 

Use these three practical strategies to help your child build a robust vocabulary to support reading and writing:

1. Read books with your child for at least 15 minutes every day
2. Use rich vocabulary to describe your surroundings and activities
3. Play with sounds and words to build knowledge of the alphabetic code

Our Alphabites game pack is a fun way to teach your child the alphabetic code. It comes with 26 games, 400+ words, and 32 unique tongue twisters. A link to our Quick Start guide shows you how to quickly move your child from learning sounds and letters to reading words and decodable books. 

We are happy to help you find resources or provide research based answers to your early literacy questions. Contact us today with your questions or comments. 

Sources

Hadley, E. B., Dickinson, D. K., Hirsh‐Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2019). Building semantic networks: The impact of a vocabulary intervention on preschoolers’ depth of word knowledge. Reading Research Quarterly, 54(1), 41-61.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606577.pdf 

Hassinger‐Das, B., Ridge, K., Parker, A., Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh‐Pasek, K., & Dickinson, D. K. (2016). Building vocabulary knowledge in preschoolers through shared book reading and gameplay. Mind, Brain, and Education, 10(2), 71-80 .https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED575955.pdf 

Logan, J. A., Justice, L. M., Yumuş, M., & Chaparro-Moreno, L. J. (2019). When children are not read to  at home: The million word gap. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(5), 383-386. https://crane.osu.edu/files/2020/01/When_Children_Are_Not_Read_to_at_Home__The_Million.9.pdf