Children develop the ability to understand language and to use it to express themselves in the pre-school years. In the school years, these abilities expand and grow. Children also develop more sophisticated metalinguistic awareness. Learning to read gives a major boost to this aspect of language development. Seeing words represented by letters and other symbols on a page leads children to a new understanding that language has form as well as meaning. Reading reinforces the understanding that a `word' is separate from the thing it represents. Unlike three-year-olds, children who can read understand that `the' is a word, just as ‘house’ is. They understand that `caterpillar' is a longer word than `train', even though the object it represents is substantially shorter! Metalinguistic awareness also includes the discovery of such things as ambiguity. Knowing that words and sentences can have multiple meaning gives children access to word jokes, trick questions, and riddles, which they love to share with their friends and family.
One of the most impressive language developments in the early school years is the astonishing growth of vocabulary. Children enter school with the ability to understand and produce hundreds or even a few thousand words, and thousands more will be learned at school. In both the spoken and written language at school, words such as ‘homework’ or ‘ruler’ appear frequently in situations where their meaning is either immediately or gradually revealed. Words like ‘population’ or ‘latitude’ occur less frequently, but they are made important by their significance in academic subject matter.
Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending mainly on how much and how widely children read (Nagy, Herman, and Anderson 1985). The kind of vocabulary growth required for school success is likely to come from both reading for assignments and reading for pleasure, whether narrative or non-fiction. Dee Gardner (2004) suggests that reading a variety of text types is an essential part of vocabulary growth. The importance of reading for vocabulary growth is seen when observant parents report a child using a new word but mispronouncing it in a way that reveals it has been encountered only in written form.
Another important development in the school years is the acquisition of different language registers. Children learn how written language differs from spoken language, how the language used to speak to the principal is different from the language of the playground, how the language of a science report is different from the language of a narrative. As Terry Piper (1998) and others have documented, some children will have even more to learn. They come to school speaking an ethnic or regional variety of the school language that is quite different from the one used by the teacher. They will have to learn that another variety, often referred to as the standard variety is required for successful academic work. Other children arrive at school speaking a different language altogether. For these children, the work of language learning in the early school years presents additional opportunities and challenges. We will return to this topic when we discuss bilingualism in early childhood.