Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the child’s bank of words. There are 2 types of vocabulary:

• Words a child can understand; their receptive vocabulary. For example; being able to name a picture that has been pointed to (receptive vocabulary).

• Words a child actually uses in conversation; their expressive vocabulary.  

When children are developing language, their receptive vocabulary is thought to be considerably larger than their expressive vocabulary. For example: they may be able to pick the correct picture based on the word you provide, but they may not use that word when talking themselves. Some children may understand many words but use very few when speaking or have lots of difficulty naming things.

These children may have difficulty retrieving the word from their mental dictionary (lexicon).

A child with word retrieval difficulties may present with:

• difficulty naming items you know they understand.

• talking around a word and not narrowing in on it.

• calling everything a general name e.g. ‘thingy’

Difficulties with vocabulary may also present as:

• a very limited or small number of words being used in conversation

• one word responses