Vocabulary development

By Terri Hessler

Two researchers in the early ‘80s (i.e., Morris and Crump, 1982) discovered that students with learning disabilities were more likely to use fewer different words in their written expression than students without disabilities. They surmised that a lack of spelling ability could account for this, i.e., students with disabilities were more likely to use words they knew how to spell than “new” words, resulting in a repetition of easier-to-spell words. For example, a student might write the following:

I wulked to the store I din’t care. I wulked rite passed a big dog. I din’t see the big dog. I all most fell. He was a nice dog.

Other research (e.g., the body of work by Hart & Risley) indicates that the number of words a student is exposed to before the start of school correlates with 3rd grade academic achievement (i.e., higher number of words means higher academic achievement). So, to go back to the Morris and Crump study, perhaps students who are using fewer different words do not have a rich vocabulary from which to draw. Of course, Morris and Crump do not indicate if the students who used fewer different words had a richer oral vocabulary than their written expression indicated. Interestingly, it is quite common for students who are identified with disabilities and who have deficits in written expression to tell stories and give verbal descriptions using at- or above-grade level vocabulary that does not seem to appear in their writing pieces. Such a student might tell the story in the example given above like this:

“I strolled to the store casually, not caring about anything. I walked right past a mammoth of a dog (a Harlequin Great Dane, I think) without seeing him because I was absorbed in my thoughts. I almost tripped over him, but he didn’t even growl. That dog had a calm disposition.”

Notice that not only is the vocabulary more varied and advanced, but the description is longer and more involved. Shorter writing pieces are a classic characteristic of students with disabilities, especially those who have deficits in written expression.

So the short and simple message for this month is to help your child develop a better vocabulary and help him or her to learn to spell the words he or she uses.

One way I do the former (i.e., develop better vocabulary) with Carmi is to talk, sing, and read to her as much as possible. The landmark longitudinal study by Hart & Risley isolated as many variables as possible to determine that the number of words a child hears by the time he/she is 3 correlates with 3rd grade academic achievement. By doing so, the results showed that there is a 30 million word gap in the number of words a child of low SES (socioeconomic status) is exposed to compared to a child of high SES. Education researchers have long known that districts with high numbers of poor kids have lower achievement outcomes than students in more affluent districts (e.g., Columbus Public Schools compared to Upper Arlington City Schools). My translation of this is not that people need to be in high SES before having kids or even that they need to move to UA or Bexley or Dublin or New Albany before their kids start school. The take-home for me is that I need to make sure my child hears as many words as possible by the time she turns 3.

I knew of this study when we first brought Carmi home, but I didn’t get serious about it until she was about 6 months old. I just couldn’t get used to talking, singing, and reading to a being who didn’t reciprocate in some way. My bad. I lost a lot of time, I think. Fortunately, Russ is an incessant talker so I think he is more than making up for lost time. Take note: Television doesn’t count! There has to be interaction along with the exposure to the words.

For the latter (i.e., learn to spell the words she uses), I haven’t read the research on this. I’m not even sure there is research on this. So what I’m doing is helping Carmi become familiar with word families. One of our favorite programs to watch with her right now is Super Why? on PBS. In this show, one of the main characters is Wonder Red (in reference to Little Red Riding Hood, I think) who has Word Power, which is essentially an affinity for word families, such as ar words like far, car, jar or at words, like mat, cat, bat. So Carmi and I (and Russ does this, too, so there’s consistency) will occasionally sing the song on the show with new words. I know you won’t be able to imagine the tune, but if you go to www.pbskids.org/superwhy you might be able to find it there, but also watching it just once (9 a.m. on ch. 34/WOSU) will cause it to stick in your head (it’s one of those kinds of jingles). Just pick a word (one syllable works best), and think of another word that rhymes with it. I’ll use the word cap. A word that rhymes with cap is tap. The lyrics go like this: “Cap, tap, cap. Wonderific, you’re terrific, cap, tap, cap, wonderific, you’re terrific, cap!” After Carmi and I sing the song, I try to think of and say as many of the words in that word family as I can (e.g., flap, gap, lap, map, nap, rap, sap). I try to do this when I’m in the car with Carmi, because I tend to gravitate towards listening to talk radio, which probably isn’t much fun for her. It’s also a better alternative for me than tapes of kid songs, which I can only listen to one or two time through before my ears start to bleed.

I try to remember to connect all the phoneme practice with anything we read. I’m not very good at that, but I’m trying. And I’m certainly not systematic about it either. She’s only just now starting to say a lot of words spontaneously so it might get to be more fun as she joins in.

I also try to work on phoneme practice every chance I get. This will help her be ready to read, but I also believe it may help with spelling later. Phonemes are simply the smallest sound segments in our language, like the sounds the individual alphabet letters make. According to some research that I find compelling, it’s more important for a child to learn what sounds the letters make than to learn what the letter names are. The way I give Carmi extra phoneme practice now is in the bath tub with foam letters. I’ll hold up the letter C for example, and then I’ll say (very enthusiastically) something like “This is the letter C, Carmi! Your name starts with C! C makes the /k/ sound. Can you say /k/?” Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s a very low pressure activity, and I do my best to make it a short activity and fun.