Typical students will learn more than 5,000 new word meanings each year through sixth grade.

It’s painfully obvious to point out that vocabulary development is critical during the school age years, and equally obvious to say that we need to make a conscious effort to address it with our students.

What’s less obvious is how we determine what is “normal vocabulary development”.

How can we crawl in to someone’s head and tell if they know enough pieces of information about enough words, and know enough about how to use them in different situations?

We get a lot of pressure to stay “accountable”, and use data to document progress. But can we really measure how many words someone knows? And how do we tell if what they know falls in line with normal vocabulary development?

I wish I could answer all these questions in one handy article; but as I said in this article about morphological development, I would be doing you a disservice.

So now, we’ll continue the discussion of vocabulary development from Kindergarten through adulthood.

Unlike our discussion on morphology, it’s a little messy; meaning I can’t give you a straightforward “this is what happens at this age” discussion with neatly organized headings. We’ll talk about the “big picture” developments instead.

How many words should kids know?

Most “typical” 5-year-olds have a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. When children are in school, they learn vocabulary at a rapid rate each year (Merritt, 2016).

I’ve seen a number of different statistics cited in the literature; Nagy & Scott (2000) report that children learn between 2,000-3,000 words per year. Others have cited that kids can learn up to 5,000 per year (Miller & Gildea, 1987).

And some of the lists and tables that explain vocabulary development report that most 10-year-olds know at least 20,000 words (Merritt, 2016). If you’re doing the math in your head and you’re a little confused, I’m with you.

It’s possible that all of these sources have merit correct if we consider the vast range of abilities among students that’s often impacted by the amount of stimulation in their environment; or whether we’re measuring receptive vs. expressive vocabulary; or whether we’re considering “reading and writing” vocabulary vs. oral language.

If we also consider that some kids may experience a different amount of growth each year within the “typical” range depending on what’s going on in their lives (for example, maybe they learn 2,000 words one year, but learn 4,000 the next because they start reading more), we see that any of these statistics could be possible.

It doesn’t make things as straightforward as we’d like, but it at least gives us an idea of what’s happening.

What kinds of words should kids know?

Because of the large variability in vocabulary development, we’re often not sure what words are age appropriate; or what words are important for school success.

And while we can’t pinpoint a checklist of words that kids “should” know at each at, we can identify certain “major developments” to watch over the school age years.

These can be considered significant developments because they are skills that are important for school. They are also the skills that seem to change more significantly throughout the course of school age years.

I’m going to talk about three of them: double-function words, adverbs, and “meta” verbs. 

*The entire section below about these three types of words comes from Nippold (2016).

Double-Function Words

Part of learning vocabulary is learning that words can have more than one function and meaning. This is something we often address in language therapy, but there’s little talk of how this skill actually develops.

Many words with multiple meanings have what’s known as a literal meaning and a psychological meaning.

For example, the literal meaning for the word “cold” means “the absence of heat”.

But we also use the word “cold” to describe someone who is unfriendly or emotionally withdrawn.

Very often, children learn this literal meaning before the psychological meaning because it’s more concrete; and then they gradually fine-tune their understanding of the word over time.

Between ages 3-4 children pick up on these literal meanings, and understanding of the psychological meanings emerges around 5-6.

By ages 7-8, this skill is still emerging.

By ages 9-10, awareness of these psychological meanings starts to solidify, and by ages 11-12 children have developed a full understanding of both meanings of double-function words.

The quality and quantity of double-function words children know continues to expand through the adolescent years.

Adverbs

Children start to use nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the early years (and continue to expand on the complexity and quantity of these words as they build their morphological skills).

But adverbs deserve special mention, because using them requires knowledge of subtle differences in meaning.

Some people argue that they’re overused and at times unnecessary.

Despite the fact that they’re often used in excess, they’re not going away anytime soon; and students need to understand their meanings if they’re going to navigate academic texts; not to mention day-to-day conversations.

Nippold (2016) mentions two different types of adverbs in her discussion of literate language; adverbs of likelihood, and adverbs of magnitude. Adverbs of likelihood explain how likely something is to happen (for example: possibly). Adverbs of magnitude explain how much something is (for example: extremely, very).

If you’re looking for specific types of adverbs to emphasize with your students, these would be two important ones to consider.

Many children begin to understand adverbs as early as age 6, but they become much more proficient by age 10. Depending on the type of adverb and the difficulty level, there are some that continue to be confusing for people in their adult years.

Metacognitive and Metalinguistic Verbs

In the school age years, children become significantly more “meta”, meaning they’re able to think about the different parts and types of words more consciously

But there are actually words that are considering “meta” words. So if you’re being “meta” about a word that is “meta” in itself it’s like a double whammy…or something like that.

First, let’s define these words. Metacognitive verbs are verbs that describe “thinking” words; like “remember” or “conclude”. These words usually describe a more specific way of “knowing” or thinking about something.

Metalinguistic verbs are words that describe ways of communicating, like “explain” or “confirm”. These words describe a more specific way of talking or sharing information about something.

Both kinds of words are used often in academic texts. Teachers often encourage kids to use “vivid” verbs when they’re writing, and these two types definitely fall in that category.

It’s no surprise that even typically developing students struggle with this, because this may not be fully mastered for some until college-age (even though it continues to develop through school age years).

I’ll stop here for now, but to learn one of the key language skills that develops over the course of the school-age years and how to build it in your therapy, download this free guide for SLPs.

This free guide is called The Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure.

Inside you’ll learn exactly how to focus your language therapy. Including:

• The hidden culprit behind unexplained “processing problems” that’s often overlooked.
• The deceptively simple way to write language goals; so you’re not spending hours on paperwork (goal bank included).
• The 4 sentence types often behind comprehension and expression issues and why they’re so difficult.
• An easy-to-implement “low-prep” strategy proven to boost sentence structure, comprehension, and written language (conjunctions flashcards included).

References

Merritt, D. D. (2016, February). Typical speech and language development for school-age children: A checklist for school nurses. Retrieved from: http://ctserc.org/component/k2/item/130-typical-speech-and-language-development-for-school-age-children

Miller, G. A., & Gildea, P. M. (1987). How children learn words. Scientific American, 257, 94-99.

Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosethal, & R. Barr (Eds.) Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 3, pp. 269-284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nippold, M. A. (2016). Later language development: School-age children, adolescents, and young adults (4th Ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Inc.

*This page contains affiliate links to Amazon, which means I get a small commission for purchases made using those links.

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