When we talk with children, we naturally use simple, common words. Books don’t. A picture book about a squirrel might mention “scurrying”, “hoarding” and “burrows” on a single page. That difference is one of the strongest reasons to read aloud.
Books use words that talk doesn’t
In 1988, Donald Hayes and Margaret Ahrens compared the vocabulary of many kinds of language: conversation, television, newspapers and books. They found that written texts, including children’s books, contain far more rare words than speech, more even than everyday conversation between college-educated adults.
More recently, a 2015 study by Jessica Montag, Michael Jones and Linda Smith in Psychological Science compared picture books with recorded speech to young children and found the books contained a richer variety of words.
Which words to focus on
Educators Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan describe three tiers of words:
- Tier 1: everyday words children learn by talking (happy, run, dog).
- Tier 2: useful words that appear more in books than in speech (enormous, glance, reluctant, harvest). These are the sweet spot for reading aloud.
- Tier 3: specialist words tied to a subject (photosynthesis, peninsula).
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Five ways to help new words stick
- Pause and explain in kid-friendly words: “Enormous means really, really big.”
- Point to the picture that shows it.
- Use it again later that day: “That’s an enormous pumpkin!”
- Reread favourites. Children need to meet a word several times.
- Play with words: ask for a silly sentence using the new word.
This season’s word-rich reads
Fall is full of great words: harvest, migrate, hibernate, crisp, gourd, rustle. Explore free fall books, Thanksgiving stories and the science behind why leaves change colour, then try the fall printables for extra practice.
Sources
- Hayes, D. P. & Ahrens, M. G. (1988). Vocabulary simplification for children: a special case of “motherese”? Journal of Child Language 15(2), 395–410
- Montag, J. L., Jones, M. N. & Smith, L. B. (2015). The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning. Psychological Science
- Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G. & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. Guilford Press
Thousands of free picture books, each full of new words to discover together.