Vocabulary Knowledge and Verbal Ability - Speech or Presentation Example

There is no doubt that vocabulary knowledge indicates one’s verbal ability, “contributes to young children’s phonological awareness, which in turn contributes to their word recognition”, and enhances reading comprehension whereas lack of vocabulary competency adversely influences one’s comprehension of texts and can even contribute to the school failure (Graves, 2009, p. 2). Therefore, it is imperative that both the teachers and the parent's design multifaceted and long term vocabulary program whereby the students receive rich and varied language experiences, learn more of individual words through word-learning strategies and develop their interest to learn new word meanings.

As parents, you can do a wide range of things to improve the vocabulary of your children. Children at home need to be offered a wide variety of language experiences so that they learn words through listening, speaking, reading, and writing. While listening and speaking promote vocabulary growth at the kindergarten grades, engaging freely in authentic discussions where give-and-take conversations take place to contribute immensely to the vocabulary development of children at home. Similarly, one should always bear in mind that “vocabulary instruction is most effective when learners are given both definitional and contextual information when learners actively process the new word meanings, and when they experience multiple encounters with words” (Graves, 2009, p. 3).I would like to conclude my letter by telling you of some of the possible strategies that you can employ at home for vocabulary development.

Children need to be encouraged to learn new words from various contexts, from dictionaries and other reference texts, and they should be encouraged to frame as many new words as possible by adding suffixes or prefixes to the new word. Mark Aubrey, in this respect, argues that the parents can teach a lot of new vocabulary to their children through various word games, flashcards, picture dictionaries, word talk and bedtime stories (Aubrey). I wish and pray that your efforts may create more awareness and interest in words and their meanings among our students.