Lexical Features of Parental Academic Language Input: the Effect on Vocabulary Growth in Monolingual Dutch Children

Abstract

The importance of a rich vocabulary for successful literacy development of children has been well established over the past decades. It has been shown in several studies that children’s vocabulary knowledge is of great value in predicting eventual school success (Biemiller and Boote, 2003; Bornstein, 1998; Bornstein, Haynes and Painter, 1998; Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997; Tymms, Merrell and Henderson, 1997). Most likely, the relationship between vocabulary and school success is mediated by children’s reading proficiency. Several studies have shown that inadequate vocabulary knowledge hinders reading comprehension from the very beginning of literacy development in elementary school (cf. Biemiller and Boote, 2003). Since reading is a major skill in every school subject, insufficient reading comprehension skills in turn will cause problems in numerous fields of the elementary school curriculum.