Early/emergent literacy skills are vital precursors to literacy in later grades. Children who have weaker emergent literacy skills in preschool and kindergarten tend to continue to perform suboptimally relative to their peers in both reading and writing in later grades (Duncan et al., 2007).
Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., et al. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1428–1446.
Background Knowledge is very important for reading comprehension. Understanding text can often be very difficult without basic Background Knowledge in the subject/topic because reading often requires students to make inferences from the text. Without the appropriate foundational Background Knowledge, this may be impossible in some circumstances (Neuman, Kaefer, & Pinkham, 2014). Also, many words have multiple meanings and can be ambiguous if the reader does not have the sufficient Background Knowledge to choose the correct meaning (e.g. the word bank could refer to a financial institution or to the edge of a river) (Neuman et al., 2014).
Moreover, Background Knowledge allows readers to understand figurative language like metaphors and idioms. Figurative language is very common in texts, and children who lack Background Knowledge have a more difficult time understanding many texts. The reliance on Background Knowledge grows as students progress through school, and they are required to build upon prior knowledge to acquire new knowledge. Also, the comprehension of informational texts requires students to have more Background Knowledge relative to storybook texts, as informational texts typically use more complex Vocabulary and require students to apply information from prior lessons (Price, Bradley, & Smith, 2012).
See the section on Verbal Reasoning for information about appropriately using Background Knowledge to make inferences about text.
Alexander, P., Kulikowich, J., & Schulze, S. (1994). How subject-matter knowledge affects recall and interest. American Educational Research Journal, 31(2), 313-337.
Carey, S. (1985). Conceptual development in childhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chou, P. T. M. (2011). The effects of vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge on reading comprehension of Taiwanese EFL students. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 8(1), 108-115.
Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children’s inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57-75.
Droop, M., & Verhoeven, L. (1998). Background knowledge, linguistic complexity, and second-language reading comprehension. Journal of Literacy Research, 30(2), 253-271.
Elbro, C., & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013). Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435-452.
Gelman, S. A., & Coley, J. D. (1990). The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird: Categories and inferences in 2-year-old children. Developmental Psychology, 26(5), 796–804.
Hirsch, E.D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge – of words and the world: Scientific insights into the fourth-grade slump and stagnant reading comprehension. American Educator, 27(1), 10-22, 28-29, 48.
Kaefer, T., Neuman, S. B., & Pinkham, A. M. (2015). Pre-existing background knowledge influences socioeconomic differences in preschoolers’ word learning and comprehension. Reading Psychology, 36(3), 203-231.
McNeil, L. (2011). Investigating the contributions of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies to L2 reading comprehension: An exploratory study. Reading and Writing, 24(8), 883-902.
Neuman, S. B., Kaefer, T., & Pinkham, A. (2014). Building background knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 68(2), 145-148.
Price, L. H., Bradley, B. A., & Smith, J. M. (2012). A comparison of preschool teachers’ talk during storybook and information book read-alouds. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27(3), 426-440.
Pulido, D. (2004). The effect of cultural familiarity on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. The Reading Matrix: An Online International Journal, 4(2), 20-53.
Shapiro, A. (2004). How including prior knowledge as a subject variable may change outcomes of learning research. American Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 159-189.
Taboada, A., Tonks, S. M., Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (2009). Effects of motivational and cognitive variables on reading comprehension. Reading and Writing, 22(1), 85-106.
Was, C. A., & Woltz, D. J. (2007). Reexamining the relationship between working memory and comprehension: The role of available long-term memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(1), 86-102.
Morphological Awareness refers to sensitivity to morphemes and linguistic units including root words, prefixes, suffixes, intonations, and stress, which all convey meaning. Morphological knowledge allows a student to understand the relationship between the verb “teach” and the noun “teacher” where the morpheme “-er” has transformed a verb to a noun. It also will allow a child to understand the difference and relationship between the singular “cat” and the plural “cats” by understanding the meaning of the plural “–s” morpheme. Moreover, morphological knowledge includes an understanding of stress and phonological changes (part of Phonological Awareness) that may occur, such as the difference in pronunciation between the root word “sign” and “signature.”
Word components (morphemes) include:
Morphemes can also be classified as:
Morphology is important to a variety of literacy skills including reading comprehension (Nagy et al., 2003), reading fluency, spelling, and word identification (Green, 2009).
Morphological Awareness likely contributes to literacy in several ways, including enabling readers/spellers to decode and produce longer words more accurately (by recognizing the multiple components in a word: roots/prefixes/suffixes), providing understanding of the writing system, helping children process language analytically, and facilitating Vocabulary development (Nagy et al., 2003).
Anglin, J. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10), 1-186.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Font, G., Tereshinski, C. A., Kame’enui, E. J., & Olejnik, S. (2002). Teaching morphemic and contextual analysis to 5th grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 37(2), 150-173.
Bowers, P. N., Kirby, J. R., & Deacon, S. H. (2010). The effects of morphological instruction on literacy skills a systematic review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 144-179.
Briscoe, J., Bishop, D. V., & Norbury, C. F. (2001). Phonological processing, language, and literacy: A comparison of children with mild‐to‐moderate sensorineural hearing loss and those with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(3), 329-340.
Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.),Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189-209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Carlisle, J. F., & Fleming, J. (2003). Lexical processing of morphologically complex words in the elementary years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(3), 239–253.
Chen, X., Ramirez, G., Luo, Y. C., Geva, E., & Ku, Y. M. (2012). Comparing vocabulary development in Spanish-and Chinese-speaking ELLs: The effects of metalinguistic and sociocultural factors. Reading and Writing, 25(8), 1991-2020.
Crain-Thoreson, C., Dahlin, M. P., & Powell, T. A. (2001). Parent-child interaction in three conversational contexts: Variations in style and strategy. In J. Brooks-Gunn & P. Rebello (Eds.), Sourcebook on emergent literacy (pp. 23-38). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Green, L. (2009). Morphology and literacy: Getting our heads in the game. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40(3), 283-285.
Hammill D. D., Newcomer P. L. (2008). Test of language development–Intermediate (4th ed.). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.
Nagy, W., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Vaughan, K., & Vermeulen, K. (2003). Relationship of morphology and other language skills to literacy skills in at-risk second-grade readers and at-risk fourth-grade writers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 730-742.
Norbury, C. F., Bishop, D. V. M., & Briscoe, J. (2001). Production of English finite verb morphology: A comparison of SLI and mild–moderate hearing impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 165-178.
Norbury, C. F., Bishop, D. V. M., & Briscoe, J. (2002). Does impaired grammatical comprehension provide evidence for an innate grammar module? Applied Psycholinguistics, 23(2), 247–268.
Sénéchal, M., Pagan, S., Lever, R., & Ouellette, G. P. (2008). Relations among the frequency of shared reading and 4-year-old children’s vocabulary, morphological and syntax comprehension, and narrative skills. Early Education and Development, 19(1), 27-44.
Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1996). Effects of morphology on children’s spelling of final consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 141-170.
Wolter, J. A., Wood, A., & D’zatko, K. W. (2009). The influence of morphological awareness on the literacy development of first-grade children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40(3), 286-298.
Telling stories requires children to properly form sentences (use Syntax), use Vocabulary, and organize sentences in a meaningful way (Vandewalle et al., 2012). Thus, Narrative Skills are complex and depend upon the development of oral language skills such as grammar and Vocabulary. Narrative Skills rely both on elements of macrostructure (e.g., story organization) and microstructure (e.g., syntactic and semantic elements). Macrostructure can be analyzed by examining whether the narrative included important story grammar units such as a setting, main character(s), an initiating event, internal response, internal plan, attempts, outcome, and reaction of the character(s). By the age of 5 or 6, typically developing children are able to organize a narrative in a cohesive manner with goals and plans (Nelson, 1996).
Duncan, S., & De Avila, E. (1998). Preschool language assessment scale (Pre-Las). Monterey, CA: CTB/McGraw-Hill.
Gardner-Neblett, N., & Iruka, I. U. (2015). Oral narrative skills: Explaining the language-emergent literacy link by race/ethnicity and SES. Developmental Psychology, 51(7), 889-904.
Griffin, T. M., Hemphill, L., Camp, L., & Wolf, D. P. (2004). Oral discourse in the preschool years and later literacy skills. First Language, 24(2), 123-147.
Kit-Sum To, C., Stokes, S. F., Cheung, H.-T., & T’sou, B. (2010). Narrative assessment for Cantonese-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53(3), 648–669.
Manhardt, J., & Rescorla, L. (2002). Oral narrative skills of late talkers at ages 8 and 9. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 1-21.
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York, USA: Dial Press.
Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development: Emergence of the mediated mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Norbury, C. F., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 38(3), 287-313.
Paul, R., Hernandez, R., Taylor, L., & Johnson, K. (1996). Narrative development in late talkers: Early school age. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 39, 1295-1303.
Soodla, P., & Kikas, E. (2010). Macrostructure in the narratives of Estonian children with typical development and language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53, 1321-1333.
Vandewalle, E., Boets, B., Boons, T., Ghesquière, P., & Zink, I. (2012). Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: A three-year longitudinal study. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33, 1857-1870.
Whitehurst, G. J., Arnold, D. S., Epstein, J. N., Angell, A. L., Smith, M., & Fischel, J. E. (1994). A picture book reading intervention in daycare and home for children from low-income families. Developmental Psychology, 30, 679-689.
Zevenbergen, A. A., Whitehurst, G. J., & Zevenbergen, J. A. (2003). Effects of a shared-reading intervention on the inclusion of evaluative devices in narratives of children from low-income families. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24(1), 1-15.
Phonological Awareness is the knowledge of and ability to manipulate and detect sounds in words. This includes understanding whether two words begin with the same or different sounds, understanding whether words rhyme or not, and understanding how sounds can be manipulated to create new words. Phonemic awareness is part of Phonological Awareness. Specifically, phonemic awareness is the ability to manipulate phonemes (e.g., speech sounds like /p/ or /b/), which are the smallest units of sounds in language.
Boets, B., Wouters, J., Van Wieringen, A., De Smedt, B., & Ghesquèire, P. (2008). Modelling relations between sensory processing, speech perception, orthographic and phonological ability, and literacy achievement. Brain and Language, 106(1), 29-40.
Bowey, J.A. (1995). Socioeconomic status differences in preschool phonological sensitivity and first-grade reading achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87(3), 476-487.
Briscoe, J., Bishop, D. V., & Norbury, C. F. (2001). Phonological processing, language, and literacy: A comparison of children with mild‐to‐moderate sensorineural hearing loss and those with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(3), 329-340.
Dickinson, D. K., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., & Poe, M. D. (2003). The comprehensive language approach to early literacy: The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge among preschool-aged children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(3), 465-481.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250-287.
Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., Schatschneider, C., & Mehta, P. (1998). The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(1), 37-55.
Goswami, U. (2001). Early phonological development and the acquisition of literacy. Handbook of Early Literacy Research, 1, 111-125.
Kibby, M. Y. (2009). There are multiple contributors to the verbal short-term memory deficit in children with developmental reading disabilities. Child Neuropsychology, 15(5), 485-506.
Kibby, M. Y., & Cohen, M. J. (2008). Memory functioning in children with reading disabilities and/ or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A clinical investigation of their working memory and long-term memory functioning. Child Neuropsychology, 14(6), 525–546.
Kibby, M. Y., Marks, W., Morgan, S., & Long, C. J. (2004). Specific impairment in developmental reading disabilities: A working memory approach. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(4), 349–363.
Kruse, L. G., Spencer, T. D., Olszewski, A., & Goldstein, H. (2015). Small groups, big gains: Efficacy of a tier 2 phonological awareness intervention with preschoolers with early literacy deficits. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 24(2), 189-205.
Lerner, M. D., & Lonigan, C. J. (2016). Bidirectional relations between phonological awareness and letter knowledge in preschool revisited: A growth curve analysis of the relation between two code-related skills. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 144, 166-183.
Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, A. M., Fowler, C., & Fischer, F. W. (1977). Phonetic segmentation and recoding in the beginning reader. In A. S. Reber & D. Scarborough (Eds.), Toward a psychology of reading: The proceedings of the C.U.N.Y. Conferences (pp. 207–225). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Locke, A., Ginsborg, J., & Peers, I. (2002). Development and disadvantage: Implications for the early school years and beyond. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 37, 3-15.
Lonigan, C. J. (2004). Emergent literacy skills and family literacy. In B. Wasik (Ed.), Handbook on family literacy: Research and services (pp. 57-82). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lonigan, C. J., Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (2007). TOPEL: Test of preschool early literacy. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed Inc.
Lundberg, I., Larsman, P., & Strid, A. (2012). Development of phonological awareness during the preschool year: The influence of gender and socio-economic status. Reading and Writing, 25(2), 305-320.
McDowell, K. D., Lonigan, C. J., & Goldstein, A. (2007). Relations among socioeconomic status, age, and prediction of phonological awareness. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50(4), 1079-1092.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Niklas, F., & Schneider, W. (2013). Home literacy environment and the beginning of reading and spelling. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 38(1), 40-50.
Norbury, C. F., Bishop, D. V. M., & Briscoe, J. (2001). Production of English finite verb morphology: A comparison of SLI and mild–moderate hearing impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 165-179.
Norbury, C. F., Bishop, D. V. M., & Briscoe, J. (2002). Does impaired grammatical comprehension provide evidence for an innate grammar module? Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 247–268.
Phillips, B. M., Clancy-Menchetti, J., & Lonigan, C. J. (2008). Successful phonological awareness instruction with preschool children: Lessons from the classroom. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 28(1), 3-17.
Rashotte, C. A., MacPhee, K., & Torgesen, J. K. (2001). The effectiveness of a group reading instruction program with poor readers in multiple grades. Learning Disability Quarterly, 24(2), 119-134.
Robertson C, Salter W. (2007). The Phonological Awareness Test, Second edition (PAT-2). East Moline, Illinois: LinguiSystems.
Rouse, H. L., & Fantuzzo, J. W. (2006). Validity of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills as an indicator of early literacy for urban kindergarten children. School Psychology Review, 35(3), 341-355.
Snowling, M. J. (1991). Developmental reading disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 32(1), 49–77.
Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Development of reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 30(1), 73-87.
Syntax refers to the rules and principles that govern the structure and word order of sentences in language. Syntactic development progresses through several stages beginning at the one-word and progressing to the point where children can form more complex sentences, such as those with embedded clauses, passivation, and wh- questions. Both expressive and receptive Syntax can be measured.
Bishop, D.V.M. (2003). Test for reception of Grammar-2. London: Pearson.
Cain, K. (2007). Syntactic awareness and reading ability: Is there any evidence for a special relationship? Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(4), 679-694.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap. American Educator, 27(1), 4–9.
Holsgrove, J. V., & Garton, A. F. (2006). Phonological and syntactic processing and the role of working memory in reading comprehension among secondary school students. Australian Journal of Psychology, 58(2), 111-118.
Kit-Sum To, C., Stokes, S. F., Cheung, H.-T., & T’sou, B. (2010). Narrative assessment for Cantonese-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53(3), 648–669.
Lonigan, C. J., & Shanahan, T. (2009). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Executive summary. A scientific synthesis of early literacy development and implications for intervention. Jessup, MD: National Institute for Literacy at Ed Pubs.
Manhardt, J., & Rescorla, L. (2002). Oral narrative skills of late talkers at ages 8 and 9. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 1–21.
Nation, K., Cocksey, J., Taylor, J. S., & Bishop, D. V. (2010). A longitudinal investigation of early reading and language skills in children with poor reading comprehension. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(9), 1031-1039.
Norbury, C. F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders.Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1179-1193.
Norbury, C. F., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 38(3), 287–313.
Paul, R., Hernandez, R., Taylor, L., & Johnson, K. (1996). Narrative development in late talkers: Early school age. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 39, 1295–1303.
Sénéchal, M., Pagan, S., Lever, R., & Ouellette, G. P. (2008). Relations among the frequency of shared reading and 4-year-old children’s vocabulary, morphological and syntax comprehension, and narrative skills. Early Education and Development, 19(1), 27-44.
Vandewalle, E., Boets, B., Boons, T., Ghesquière, P., & Zink, I. (2012). Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: A three-year longitudinal study. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(6),1857–1870.
Wiig, E. H., Semel, E., & Secord, W. A. (2013). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals–Fifth edition (CELF-5). Bloomington, MN: NCS Pearson.
Wolter, J. A., Wood, A., & D’zatko, K. W. (2009). The influence of morphological awareness on the literacy development of first-grade children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 286–298.
Verbal Reasoning refers to the ability to comprehend and analyze concepts expressed through words. Understanding figurative language and inferences are important aspects of Verbal Reasoning.
In figurative language, the literal meaning of the text is different from the intended meaning. Figurative language is typically more difficult to comprehend than literal language and requires Verbal Reasoning to fully understand the writer’s intended meaning. It is a skill that begins to emerge in the prekindergarten to 3rd grade age group and continues to develop into adulthood.
Verbal Reasoning is important for making inferences to more thoroughly understand text and for understanding figurative language like idioms and metaphors. In order to appropriately apply Background Knowledge to aid reading comprehension (see Background Knowledge section), students must use Verbal Reasoning to form inferences. Most text requires the reader to make inferences based on their Background Knowledge, which helps them use contextual cues to infer the full meaning. Inference making can break down when the reader lacks the applicable Background Knowledge (Hirsch, 2003), has incorrect Background Knowledge leading to incorrect inferences (Kendeou & van den Broek, 2007), or possesses the appropriate Background Knowledge but does not use it in a suitable manner to form inferences. There are different types of inferences including local and global inferences. Local inferences require the reader to connect and integrate information within the text (e.g., understanding the relationship between ideas across several sentences), and global inferences typically require the reader to draw on information and Background Knowledge that is external from the text (Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Currie & Cain, 2015).
Inference Studies
Figurative Language Studies
Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. V. (1999). Inference making and its relation to comprehension failure. Reading and Writing, 11(5), 489-503.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., Barnes, M. A., & Bryant, P. E. (2001). Comprehension skill, inference-making ability, and their relation to knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 29(6), 850-859.
Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children’s inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57-75.
Elbro, C., & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013). Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435-452.
Gibbs, R. W. (1987). Linguistic factors in children’s understanding of idioms. Journal of Child Language, 14(3), 569-586.
Hirsch, E. D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge of words and the world: Scientific insights into the fourth-grade slump and the nation’s stagnant reading comprehension scores. American Educator, 27, 10-22, 28-29, 48.
Kendeou, P., & van den Broek, P. (2007). The effects of prior knowledge and text structure on comprehension processes during reading of scientific texts. Memory & Cognition, 35(7), 1567-1577.
MacKay, G., & Shaw, A. (2004). A comparative study of figurative language in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 20(1), 13-32.
Norbury, C. F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1179-1193.
Oakhill, J. V., & Cain, K. (2012). The precursors of reading ability in young readers: Evidence from a four-year longitudinal study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(2), 91-121.
Van Herwegen, J., Dimitriou, D., & Rundblad, G. (2013). Development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in typically developing children and Williams syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(4), 1300-1311.
Vocabulary knowledge involves both the lexical representation of the stored sound patterns (phonology) of words, as well as the semantic representations of word meanings (Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Thus, a distinction can be made between the number of lexical entries in a child’s Vocabulary (Vocabulary breadth) and the richness and extent of the semantic representations (Vocabulary depth). A distinction can also be made between receptive and productive Vocabulary, where receptive Vocabulary refers to words that are understood by the listener and productive Vocabulary refers to words that can be appropriately produced in context by the speaker. Typically, Vocabulary growth is relatively slow until a child has 50-100 productive Vocabulary words, usually at the end of the 2nd year of life. At this point, it is common to see a sudden jump in development (“vocabulary spurt”) where children add 10-20 new words per week.
It is useful to assess both production and comprehension of Vocabulary
Chou, P. T. M. (2011). The effects of vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge on reading comprehension of Taiwanese EFL students. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 8(1), 108-115.
Connor, C. M., Son, S. H., Hindman, A. H., & Morrison, F. J. (2005). Teacher qualifications, classroom practices, family characteristics, and preschool experience: Complex effects on first graders’ vocabulary and early reading outcomes. Journal of School Psychology, 43(4), 343-375.
Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children’s inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57-75.
Davidse, N. J., de Jong, M. T., Bus, A. G., Huijbregts, S. C. J., & Swaab, H. (2011). Cognitive and environmental predictors of early literacy skills. Reading and Writing, 24(4), 395-412.
Goswami, U. (2001). Early phonological development and the acquisition of literacy. Handbook of Early Literacy Research, 1, 111-125.
Harms, T., Clifford, R. M., & Cryer, D. (1998). Early childhood environment rating scale. Revised edition. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
Hoff, E. (2003a). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368-1378.
Hoff, E. (2003b). Causes and consequences of SES-related differences in parent-to-child speech. In M.H. Bornstein & R.H. Bradley (Eds.), Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development (pp. 147-160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 1-27.
Leung, C. B. (2008). Preschoolers’ acquisition of scientific vocabulary through repeated read-aloud events, retellings, and hands-on science activities. Reading Psychology, 29(2), 165-193.
Levelt, W.J.M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A.S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1-75.
Mancilla‐Martinez, J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2011). The gap between Spanish speakers’ word reading and word knowledge: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 82(5), 1544-1560.
Marchman, V. A., Fernald, A., & Hurtado, N. (2010). How vocabulary size in two languages relates to efficiency in spoken word recognition by young Spanish–English bilinguals. Journal of Child Language, 37(04), 817-840.
Morra, S., & Camba, R. (2009). Vocabulary learning in primary school children: Working memory and long-term memory components. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104(2), 156-178.
Nagy, W., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Vaughan, K., & Vermeulen, K. (2003). Relationship of Morphology and Other Language Skills to Literacy Skills in At-Risk Second-Grade Readers and At-Risk Fourth-Grade Writers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 730-742.
Ouellette, G. P. (2006). What’s meaning got to do with it: The role of vocabulary in word reading and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(3), 554-566.
Pan, B. A., Rowe, M. L., Singer, J. D., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low‐income families. Child Development, 76(4), 763-782.
Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom assessment scoring system [CLASS] manual: Pre-K. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child‐directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83(5), 1762-1774.
Sénéchal, M., & LeFevre, J. A. (2002). Parental involvement in the development of children’s reading skill: A five‐year longitudinal study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.
Smith, M. W., Dickinson, D. K., Sangeorge, A., & Anastasopoulos, L. (2002). User’s guide to the Early Language & Literacy Classroom Observation toolkit: Research edition. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
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