11 content words as does an adult sending a telegram. The sentences reflect the
childs grammar at that particular stage of language development. They begin to use syntactic or grammatical function words and also to acquire the
inflectional and the derivational morphemes of the language.
10
And finally the children produce sentences that more and more closely approximate the
adult grammar.
2. The Growth of Vocabulary
The growth of vocabulary includes to language acquisition development. The children vocabularies grow rapidly after the first year of
age. At the last of age 1, generally, a child can use 10 words. At the second year, the children vocabularies grow about 300 words. The figure below
shows the increase in vocabulary size during the preschool years. On the following figure, the number on horizontal line shows the age
at years and months and the number on vertical line shows the average of words. We can see the growth of children vocabulary from 1 until 6
–year-old. The fastest growth is between 1, 5 and 2
–year-old, which the vocabulary grows until teen times increase from 30 words at 1, 5 year old and 300 words
at 2 –year-old.
10
Ibid, p. 326-327
12
THE AVERAGE GROWTH OF CHILDREN VOCABULARY FROM 1 UNTIL 6
–YEAR-OLD
The age at years and months
Crystal, 1987:232
11
After children enter school, their vocabularies grow rapidly, owing to direct teaching, new experiences, leisure reading, and radio and television
listening. It is estimated that the average first grader knows between 20,000 and 24,000 words, or 5 to 6 percent of the words in a standard dictionary. The
sixth grader knows approximately 50,000 words, and the child entering high school about 80,000 words, or 22 percent of the words in a standard
dictionary.
12
11
Laila Fidelina, Pengaruh Gender pada Perkembangan Kompetensi Komunikatif, Depok: Universitas Indonesia,1995, p. 27
12
Elizabeth B. Hurlock, Child Development, USA: McGraw-Hill Book Company, INC, 1978, p. 172
500 1000
1500 2000
2500 3000
1 1,6
2 2,6
3 3,6
4 4,6
5 5,6
6
13 Individual differences in vocabulary size at every age are due to
differences in intelligence, environmental influences, learning opportunities, and motivation to learn. According to Miller in the book Language and
Communication, although there are large individual differences, in the average child the vocabulary appears to increase rather slowly at first, then rapidly
between the ages of two and eight years, and then more slowly until maturity.
13
Girls on the average, it has been reported, have larger vocabularies and also have the speech was better than boys‘.
3. The Acquisition of Concept
