Special Education - My Child has Poor Vocabulary Skills

TutorGiant.com

     It is common knowledge that students will poor vocabulary skills are also often poor readers.  Quite often though, students aren’t able to recognize words at their reading level. 

     If you want to help improve your child’s vocabulary skills you can try the following:

·         Have your child read, read, and do some more reading!  It’s no secret.  The more a child reads, the stronger his/her vocabulary will become.  It is recommended that your child read a wide variety of genres such as: humor, historical fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, and of course, all types of non-fiction.  A greater variety of genres exposes your child to words that he may not find elsewhere.

·         Teach your child to use context clues.  For example, when your child is reading and she comes to an unfamiliar word, she should try to replace that word with one she already knows.  If her word ‘fits’, she’ll have a better understanding of the unfamiliar word.

·         Help your child create a personal dictionary.  You can use a regular notebook to create a dictionary (i.e. every few pages will have words that begin with each letter) that contains words that were unfamiliar to your child when reading.

·         Highlight or underline words that your child doesn’t know and put these words in a personal vocabulary list or personal dictionary.

·         Have your child compile words that he/she didn’t know, type them on the computer, and print out a new word list.  Your child can put these words somewhere on a wall in the house.  Try to create a ‘word wall’.

     These strategies have been proven to work. Again though, nothing replaces reading.  Do your best to get your child interested in reading (even comics can be beneficial!) and you will see a definite improvement in his/her vocabulary skills.

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