Expressive vocabulary growth in Russian-speaking typicallydeveloping children during preschool and primary school years

Abstract

Introduction. Vocabulary evaluation is a crucial part of language assessment. Unfortunately, in Russia, we still lack a standardized test for vocabulary evaluation; and the tests developed in other languages are not relevant due to cultural and linguistic differences. Moreover, experimental studies in vocabulary acquisition are still scarce in Russia, and, thus, age norms, especially for the later stages of language development, are still not available. Since researchers and practitioners have to rely on their own experience, as well as on their individual theoretical and methodological background, results of the studies are inconsistent or even controversial. The aim of the working group from State Pediatric Medical Universitycoordinated by Alexander Kornev is to develop and to standardize a test of expressive vocabulary for Russian-speaking preschool- and school-age children. At the current stage, the first version of the test was piloted in typically-developing and language-impaired children of different age groups. In this paper, we focus on the preschool (4-6 years) and primary school (7-10 years) age. Methodology. The subjects of the study were 70 Russian-speaking typically-developing children representing seven age groups. The visual stimuli, 200 black-and-white pictures, were employed for noun and verb elicitation. [...]