Vocabulary when reading

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
1

What do your young children do when reading to you or when you read to them and the word is unfamiliar to them? Do they ask you what it means or just let you carry on reading?

I have often wondered why my DD is not asking for explanations much when I read to her. Recently however she has begun to read books herself that have a lot harder vocabulary in them - she also often needs some help with the phonics if she doesn’t know the word and finally she is starting to ask me what these words are, but only if she is reading them - never if I read it to her. Does anyone else have this happen with their children or know perhaps why she would do this? The book she was reading tonight and asking all the questions about is a book I have read to her a good few times and she has understood enough to narrate to me what the story is about and yet there were many individual words tonight she needed to ask about.

2

I actually think that this is one of the main reasonsAlex has a crazy vocabulary and high reading comprehension…when we read together, if we encounter a more difficult word, I use synonyms as back up, both as in ‘this word means this’, bit more often as a follow-up sentence. “oh, wow, what an exuberant puppy!” (if the word in the text/ story is extremely excited, for example) “he is jumping up and down because he is SO excited! Do you think you have ever been THAT exuberant?! What about when we went to SeaWorld and the dolphin splashed you?”

So instead of simply defining a word, it becomes an opportunity to teach her an additional word and relate it to her. Then we try to use it a couple of times in the following days, or if she likes it, it goes into a jar as our vocab word of the day, which we play mostly verbal games with throughout the day.

She has started to pick up contextual clues from this game in verbal language as well. If I use a word she is not sure about, she doesn’t ask what it means, but instead says, oh, that means…and tries to figure it out from context.
Then we make it a game to play… If she is dressing slowly, And I need her to hurry, I will say "do you want to put your pants on right leg first, left leg first, or do them simultaneously?! Okay, off to bed! Do you want to scurry, skedaddle, run helter-skelter, or are we going to take our time and dawdle?

I guess, the idea is that if we play vocab games, when she sees them in books, she will often stop and point it out.

I would love to have ideas from other parents on how they are dealing with vocabulary!

3

James (2.75) doesn’t ask what difficult words in books mean when I read to him either. But he also doesn’t ask what they mean during spoken conversation. I think in many situations children can infer words from context. With picture books he certainly understands because I will ask him later what I read and he will reiterate. With books without pictures it is more challenging for him to tell me what we read.
Frankly, sometimes when there is too much vocabulary he does not know he just tunes out. So it is best for me to also stop and explain. I don’t often explain vocabulary word for word. But I will frequently rephrase a sentence or paragraph.

4

Yes, what Kerilanne and Korrale said. :slight_smile: Another thing I will sometimes do is let a YouTube video help me define a word. For example, “cavity”. What is a cavity, how do they form? I’ll search “cavity” in the video search engine and find a 1 minute-ish clip, and sometimes we’ll expand. “Elevator” is another one that YouTube defined much better than I ever could. I try to keep a mental list of words I want to look up, and then we spend a few minutes here and there looking them up. My son knows he can ask me anything, and if I don’t know the answer, we’ll look it up together.

5

My girls have always asked me, at times constantly interrupting. I often add in a little " that word means the same as…"
Interestingly I cannot recall a single occasion that my son has asked what a word means. Perhaps he is much smarter? :biggrin: or maybe he can’t get a work in edgewise around his sisters! Possibly he is just there for the story, his language understanding is exceptional for his age but he has absolutely no interest in expanding his spoken language at the moment. I often ask him to repeat a new word as it pops up in his life and rarely get any real success…unless it’s a motorbike word that is!

6

For whatever reason, I never got H. into the habit of reading to me. Maybe it’s just because it was too boring to me, or maybe if we were going to spend time looking at a book together, it was more rewarding for me to read to him, with intonation that helps convey meaning and more control on where we pause so that I can explain things. Oh I remember now: when he was solidifying his reading skills, particularly when he was 3-4, I wanted to switch back and forth reading with him, but he resisted this a lot, and I didn’t want to force him, so we didn’t do that very much. Later on, I started falling asleep when reading to him, and he would then pick up the book and keep reading out loud, which gave me an excellent nap.

Ever since H. was a baby, I have been in the habit of pausing to explain virtually every word I read to him. When he was younger (like 3-4) he would look expectantly at me if I read an unfamiliar word that I didn’t explain. He doesn’t do that anymore, but occasionally I’ll forget to define some word and he’ll just ask me what it means. So, yes, he does ask, but not very often, partly because I automatically define them for him, partly because he doesn’t mind not knowing, apparently!

I don’t know where he’d be testing on vocabulary, but I can tell you that he can now (at age 6) read Treasure Island without looking up words, and he can still more or less understand and enjoy it, but he still doesn’t understand several words per page. (For comparison, I distinctly remember my mother reading Treasure Island to me when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and it while I more less understood it, there were many words I didn’t know.) Just 20 minutes ago I started him reading it and he was complaining that he didn’t want to look up words he doesn’t know, but I insist that he do so, for vocabulary practice.

Between the ages of 2.5 and 4.5 or so we completely read through the Oxford Picture Dictionary. I’m sure that did some good. We’ve also read three of the “Vocabulary Power” books, like this: http://www.amazon.com/Vocabulary-Power-Grade-Audrey-Carangelo/dp/1602140049/ref=sr_1_1 We’ve read vocabulary from other sources as well, such as my PowerPoint presentations which introduce quite a bit of vocabulary.

Completely off-topic, I recently bought this grammar video series for H.: http://www.splashesfromtheriver.com/grammar_course.htm I love this lady, and H. liked the sample videos too. I am sure a lot of others here will appreciate certain production features, although it is slow-paced. Well, as a child gets older, I think difficult/abstract information needs to be presented more slowly. It requires mulling. Her explanations are extremely clear and simple, in the sense of being easy to grasp, not in the sense of being oversimplifications.

7

Thanks - its good to know other children are similar (and I do explain some words to my child but not every possible word that she might not understand - I was just surprised to find her needing more explaining when she reads it herself - perhaps the intonation I am using helps her to understand more when I read than when she reads it)

Today she asked what a “pirouette” was - not a word that is easy to read even if you have loads of phonics either, that one got a brief explanation based on the pictures in the book but I promised to find a youtube video to demonstrate it better.