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Children who start pre-school with bigger vocabularies, good self-control do better in class, study suggests

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Bethany HiattThe West Australian
A child’s ability to interact with teachers and classmates is affected by the range of words they know, according to the study.
Camera IconA child’s ability to interact with teachers and classmates is affected by the range of words they know, according to the study. Credit: tolmacho/Pixabay (user tolmacho)

Children who have already grasped the meaning of a wide range of words and have good attention skills when they start preschool do better in the classroom, a study suggests.

A child’s ability to interact with teachers and classmates is affected by the range of words they know, according to the study of 900 four-year-olds by Ohio State University in the US.

The research, published in the Early Education and Development journal on Wednesday, also shows that youngsters are better at classroom tasks if they have learnt how to suppress inappropriate behaviour or block out distracting feelings.

Vocabulary is important ... but it’s also important as an indicator of children’s knowledge of the world

Professor Snow

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The researchers concluded that children with lower self-control and poor vocabulary skills appeared to be at risk of negative behaviours.

Given the large amount of time that children spend in the classroom, researchers said their findings had implications for “optimising children’s vocabulary and inhibitory control development”.

Reflecting on the study, language development expert Pamela Snow from La Trobe University’s school of education said it was often the same group of children who struggled with language skills and with controlling their behaviour.

Professor Snow said universities needed to help pre-service teachers to strengthen children’s language skills and respond supportively to signs of immature self-control. That could include modelling everyday social scripts, such as saying “excuse me” when interrupting a conversation, or teaching children the right words to label their emotions, such as recognising they were “cross” or “disappointed”.

“Providing labels for those emotional responses is sowing the seeds for self-regulation,” Professor Snow said.

She said parents could also help prepare their kids for school success by chatting to them about what they were doing, providing names of objects and reading to them often.

“Vocabulary is important ... but it’s also important as an indicator of children’s knowledge of the world,” she said.

“So children who have got more words tend to know more about the world.”

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