Factors that promote vocabulary development in lower grades elementary school students

Vocabulary has an important impact on man as an individual being, since it influences our thoughts and acts. It has also an important impact on how we are perceived by others, since with our words, we express our personality, our knowledge and education. Parents want for their children to be able to clearly state their views and opinion, stand up for themselves and be successful. Greater vocabulary is definitely one of the factors that contribute to it. The basis of vocabulary are words, which are at the same time the basis of speech. The child first listens and understands speech and only after this he starts using it. His first communication is through crying, which is followed by babbling, a phase of pronunciation according to the speech pattern, gestures and signs. Between the 12th and 20th month, the child speaks his first word. He gradually learns new words, forms phrases and simple sentences and gradually forms increasingly comprehensive sentences. Learning of new words is importantly influenced by the child’s environment in the first years of life. This is particularly formed by the mother, who can with proper responses and her example encourage the development of speech. In literature, the role of the father is given very little attention, but researchers have observed differences in the communication between the toddler and the mother and father. As favourable factors for the development of vocabulary, researchers state higher education of the mother and father, great literary example of parents (reading of parents, visiting of the library and cultural institutions), joint reading and being born first or being an only child. In terms of gender, researchers favour girls, in which speech is known to develop quicker and at the same time, parents talk with them more often and articulate their speech more while communicating with them. The kindergarten is supposed to have a favourable impact particularly on children of parents with lower education or children from a less encouraging environment. We checked the impact of the mentioned factors in our research, which included 62 fantasy essays, with which we obtained information about the level of vocabulary, and 62 survey questionnaires for parents and pupils, with which we obtained data about the studied factors (education of parents, some influences on the quality of the domestic environment, joint reading, (not) attending the kindergarten, number of children in the family and the gender of the child). The results of the research showed that higher education of the mother and father and the gender of the child have proved to be the factors that have an encouraging impact on greater vocabulary of children. Frequent visiting of the library and cultural institutions did prove to be statistically important only on the basis of the answers of parents, but not the children. Frequent reading of parents, joint reading of parents and children and the number of children in the family did not prove to be statistically important factors in our research. In terms of the results, there are also no statistically important differences between children, who attended the kindergarten, and those, who did not. In our sample, the age of children when entering the kindergarten is also not connected with the vocabulary of children. We also found that female third graders have a greater vocabulary than their male peers, while the differences between genders were not statistically important in fifth graders. Based on this, we assumed that the differences in the vocabulary of girls and boys in our sample decrease with age. Based on the findings from literature and our research results, we want to encourage parents, educators and children to be aware of the importance of their role and to motivate them to establish such circumstances that will contribute to greater vocabulary of children