Answer:
There are 4 types of vocabulary:
□ Listening □ Speaking □ Reading Writing
The first two constitute spoken vocabulary and the last two, written vocabulary. Children
begin to acquire listening and speaking vocabularies many years before they start to build
reading and writing vocabularies. Spoken language forms the basis for written language.
Each type has a different purpose and, luckily, vocabulary development in one type facilitates
growth in another.
Listening Vocabulary:
The words we hear and understand. Starting in the womb, fetuses can detect sounds as
early as 16 weeks. Furthermore, babies are listening during all their waking hours – and we
continue to learn new words this way all of our lives. By the time we reach adulthood, most
of us will recognize and understand close to 50,000 words. (Stahl, 1999; Tompkins, 2005)
Children who are completely deaf do not get exposed to a listening vocabulary. Instead, if
they have signing models at home or school, they will be exposed to a “visual” listening
vocabulary. The amount of words modeled is much less than a hearing child’s incidental
listening vocabulary.
Speaking Vocabulary:
The words we use when we speak. Our speaking vocabulary is relatively limited: Most
adults use a mere 5,000 to 10,000 words for all their conversations and instructions.
This number is much less than our listening vocabulary most likely due to ease of use.
Reading Vocabulary:
The words we understand when we read text. We can read and understand many words that
we do not use in our speaking vocabulary.
This is the 2nd largest vocabulary IF you are a reader. If you are not a reader, you can not
“grow” your vocabulary.
Writing Vocabulary:
The words we can retrieve when we write to express ourselves. We generally find it easier to
explain ourselves orally, using facial expression and intonation to help get our ideas across,
then to find just the right words to communicate the same ideas in writing. Our writing
vocabulary is strongly influenced by the words we can spell.
Think about it:
When reading, a child with hearing will say all the phonemes related to a word to sound it out.
They will then guess a word they know. This is dependent upon their lexicon (mental
