How to build your child's vocabulary (and why it matters more than phonics)

Most of the attention in early reading goes to letters and sounds, because they are visible. You can see whether a child knows that b says /b/.

Vocabulary gets far less attention, and it does at least as much work. A child who can decode "the farmer surveyed his crop" perfectly, and does not know surveyed or crop, has read nothing.

The short answer

Vocabulary is built by hearing lots of words, in context, from people talking to you — not by memorising lists. The most effective things a parent can do are talk more than feels necessary, use precise words rather than simple ones, read books aloud, and build on whatever your child says rather than correcting it.

Decoding and understanding are two different jobs

Reading is roughly two skills multiplied together: working out what the word says, and knowing what it means.

Phonics handles the first. Nothing but a rich vocabulary handles the second. This is why some children read aloud beautifully in Year 2 and then struggle at nine or ten, when the texts start using words nobody uses at the dinner table.

The good news is that the second job starts years before reading does, and it happens entirely through talking.

Talk more than feels natural

Narrate what you are doing, even to a child too young to answer. "I'm chopping the onions. They're making my eyes sting. Now I'll put them in the hot oil — listen to that sizzle."

It feels odd for about a week. Then it becomes normal, and your child is hearing hundreds of words a day attached to things happening in front of them, which is the condition under which words stick.

Use the precise word

The instinct is to simplify for small children. Resist it.

• Not bird — crow, pigeon, sparrow
• Not big — enormous, towering, gigantic
• Not walk — stroll, march, stomp
• Not nice — kind, gentle, generous

Children do not need a word explained to be able to learn it. They work it out from how it is used, the way they worked out every word they already know. Using the easier word denies them that chance.

Expand, don't correct

When your child says something incomplete, resist fixing it. Repeat it back, fuller.

"Dog running." — "Yes! The brown dog is running very fast, isn't he?"

Your child hears the correct version, plus two or three new words, without being told they were wrong. Correction tends to make children say less; expansion makes them say more, and saying more is how it grows.

Read books, because books use different words

Even simple picture books use words you would rarely say out loud: gloomy, peered, scampered, delighted. That is precisely their value.

Don't skip or simplify unfamiliar words as you read. Read them, and if your child looks puzzled, drop in a quick aside: "peered — that means he looked very carefully." Then carry on. Talking around the book does more for vocabulary than the words on the page alone.

Play with word relationships

Once a child has a stock of words, the next step is connecting them:

• Opposites — "I say hot, you say…"
• Another word for — big, huge, enormous, massive
• Categories — "name three fruits", "is a spoon a toy or a tool?"
• Describe it without naming it — you describe, they guess, then swap

These are quick games for a queue or a car, and they do something a word list cannot: they build a web, where each word is linked to others. Words held in a web are remembered and retrieved far better than words held alone.

If you speak two languages, count both

A child with four hundred Hindi words and three hundred English words has seven hundred words. Tested in one language, they can look behind; across both, they are not.

Keep using your strongest language at home. A parent speaking fluently and richly in Marathi gives their child more vocabulary than the same parent speaking carefully and simply in English. Two languages do not confuse children — and the words transfer: a child who knows what generous means only needs the label in the other language, not the idea.

What doesn't help much

• Flashcards of isolated words. A word on a card with no context is the hardest possible way to learn one.
• Quizzing. "What's this? And this? What colour is it?" turns conversation into a test and shortens it.
• Simplifying everything. Covered above, and it is the most common one.
• Screen time where nobody talks. Passive video is poor for vocabulary; the back-and-forth is what does the work.

Five minutes of habits

• Narrate one everyday task out loud — cooking, laundry, the walk to the shop
• Use one precise word where you would normally use a simple one
• Expand one thing your child says, instead of correcting it
• Read one book, and don't skip the hard words
• Play one word game — opposites, or "another word for"

None of this needs materials, a schedule, or a quiet room. It needs talking, which you are doing anyway.

Vocabulary runs through several of the learn topics — animals, fruits, colours and opposites all exist to give children words attached to pictures and sounds.