Vocabulary Development in Early Language Education

Abstract

Building lexical knowledge is one of the most fundamental developments in early childhood; as such development is associated with children's later academic achievement and other language abilities. Both breadth (e.g., receptive vocabulary size) and depth (e.g., syntagmatic and paradigmatic knowledge) of lexical knowledge are vital, as the former indicates how much children know and the latter indicates how well they know it. Therefore, it would be crucial for any language program to provide qualified teaching for preschoolers to develop their lexical knowledge. The current review has synthesized findings published in

Using Mobile Applications for Teaching English Vocabulary to Young Language Learners (YLLs): Investigating the Short- and Long-term Impacts

“…The results of the study are in line with Sun and Yin (2020) who argue that technology can positively enhance YLL's learning. Regarding the four themes they found in their literature review (i.e., (1) lack of research from non-US contexts, (2) lack of information about instruction principles and amount of instruction, (3) lack of research on children's vocabulary depth, and (4) lack of better understanding on the role of socioeconomic status), the current study covered the first two themes in…”

“…Align with the growth of theory and research on YLLs, research has examined YLL's vocabulary learning. For example, in their review paper on YLL's bilingual vocabulary learning, Sun and Yin (2020) identified 15 studies that have explored vocabulary development among preschool children. Synthesis of the studies indicated several themes among the study including (1) lack of research from non-US contexts, (2) lack of information about instruction principles and amount of instruction, (3) lack of research on children's vocabulary depth, and (4) lack of better understanding on the role of socioeconomic status.…”

“…Characterized by learners who usually fall within the age range of six to 14 years (Nikolov & Mihaljević Djigunović, 2019), YLLs are psycholinguistically and emotionally rich individuals who can internalize various language competencies due to the plasticity and capacity of their mental processes, especially given their abilities to learn multiple languages and process target language information more swiftly, as compared to the adults (Copland et al, 2014;Enever, 2014). Previous research pointed to the crucial role of vocabulary in second language learning in general (Derakhshan & Janebi Enayat, 2020;Janebi Enayat & Derakhshan, 2021;Sun & Yin, 2020). Additionally, it has been argued that vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of developments in YLL's second language reading comprehension (Lervåg & Aukrust, 2010), and grammatical development (Parra et al, 2011).…”