Ok, so I have another excerpt I read from my friend's "Just Read, Florida!" literature that I found very interesting. This is about types of vocabulary - it's related to what I talked about here, in terms of expressive language and receptive language.
Several types of vocaublary have been identified:
- Listening vocabulary includes words students hear and understand at school and home.
- Speaking vocabulary includes words students use in everyday speech.
- Reading vocabulary includes words in print that students know.
* As students begin to read, reading vocabulary is mapped onto their listening and speaking vocabularies.
- Writing vocabulary includes words that students can understand and can reproduce when writing.
I have read previously that reading is easier for students when they already have rich speaking and listening vocabularies - when they sound out a word they haven't read before, it has instant meaning if the word is recognised from previous knowledge. It's cool that this works the other way, too - when students learn new words through reading, their listening and speaking vocabularies are inriched as well.
Moral of this story? Read early and often to your kids, and encourage them to read on their own for fun and for amusement!
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