How Star Wars Can Increase Your Child's Vocabulary

For parents who want to help their children develop a rich and fluent vocabulary, this fact is key: the only way to learn new words is to be exposed to them.

That does not mean that increasing your child's vocabulary is a matter of extensive or elaborate formal instruction. Quite the opposite! Most new words are learned by people reading or hearing them in used in context.

In fact, according to Reading Comprehension Difficulties, by Cesare Cornoldi and Jane Oakhill, research has shown that reading (and, by extension, listening to a work being read) is uniquely effective in enlarging vocabulary. This is because print exposes the reader to the most "rare" words.

What is a rare word?

To study vocabulary and how it is acquired, researchers ranked all the words in the English language according to the frequency of their usage. Based on this ranking, a word is "rare" if it scores lower than 10,000 on the frequency scale. Cornoldi and Oakhill state it this way: a word is rare if it is, "roughly, outside the vocabulary of most fourth to sixth graders."

Using this definition of "rare," the number one most frequently used word is "the." "Shrimp," for example, is ranked at 9,000, while "amplifier" ranks at 16,000. Thus, "amplifier" is rare word, while "shrimp" is not.

What role do rare words have in increasing vocabulary?

Again, it's very important to understand that people learn new words only when they are exposed to them, and that the most effective exposure is through print, whether read or listened to. In Reading Comprehension Difficulties, researchers made some astounding findings about how unlikely it is to be exposed to new words if one does not read.

First, researchers found that most words used in everyday conversation, or on television and radio, average between 400 and 600 on the frequency index. In other words, everyday conversation is based on a relatively small number of words that are used over and over again. Everyday conversation is not enough to learn many new (rare) words or increase vocabulary.

Secondly, researchers found that adult prime-time television and the conversation of college graduates had 50% fewer rare words than children's books. This finding lead to a startling conclusion for parents to consider: "For vocabulary growth to occur after the middle grades, children must be exposed to words that are rare by this definition."

How Star Wars---and other subjects that interest your child---can increase vocabulary

The key to developing a rich and fluent vocabulary is exposure to rare words. Reading provides that exposure. Often, however, a child may be disinterested in reading. Or he may have been put off reading by encountering works that didn't work for him. Some teachers and parents alike have the idea that, for reading to be worthwhile, kids must tackle certain books, certain genres and certain authors. As Cornoldi and Oakhill show, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

If even works written for young children expose them to rare words, and thus increase vocabulary, any decently written work on any subject is likely to do the same for your middle schoolers. One example is the multitude of print spin-offs based on Star Wars characters. In this case, as with the Harry Potter series and others, a boxset of movies introduced millions of kids to the joys of consistently reading.

But---going back to the biases that were mentioned---is Star Wars the kind of reading that counts?

It certainly can be.

There is a whole world (or many worlds) of rare words out there

When parents see a child excited about a movie, for instance, it pays to explore whether that film has a "book world" around it that might draw your child into reading.

Star Wars has a seemingly countless (and ever growing) number of books, and book series, that appeal to a wide range of fans, from the young reader on up. According to Wookieepedia, Star Wars characters have inspired "film novelizations, novels, comics, young readers, reference books, and roleplaying sourcebooks." There is sure to be something in this extensive library to please the reading preference of every Star Wars fan.

And rare (new) words? I checked out a few random pages from two Star Wars books and found they contained vocabulary words I think any parent would be pleased to see their child learn. See if you agree.

Revelation

These relatively rare words are from page 39 of Revelation (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 8), by Karen Traviss: genuinely, compromise, scattered, melted, fused, personnel, suggested, mayhem, gaffe, cue, casual, appalled, evidence, clacking, suspect, and grudge.

These words are from Revelation, page 204: grim, collision, compound, frayed, pre-composed, bidder, rely, evacuation, underestimate, Shevu-ism, commonsense, one-liners, digest, scoping, airlift, deadlines, and sensible.

Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary

These are relatively rare words from page 12, The Ultimate Guide to Characters and Creatures from the Entire Star Wars Saga, by David West Reynolds (Author), James Luceno (Author), and Ryder Windham (Contributor):

Menace, visage, clasp, countless, systems, millennia, clung, prevail, mystical, guidance, civilization, prosperous, institutions, decadent, dwindled, unbalanced, imminent, enveloped, effective, congregate, participate, colossal, enterprise, galactic, invasion, leadership, guardians, fate, psychology, bureaucracy, stifle, domination, mysterious, ancient, prey, usher (in), and radiates.

Reading counts

Your child may not want to read The Iliad and The Odyssey at this point in his life. But he may want to explore odysseys of a different sort, in a different place. Maybe even in a place in a galaxy, far, far away! If so, check out the many possibilities for reading (Wookeepedia lists most of the Star Wars books on this planet and The Force offers many, many reviews of Star Wars books). There's a very good chance your child can parlay an interest in a movie into an interest in a spacecraft-full of stellar books.

Sources:

Cesare Cornoldi and Jane Oakhill, Reading Comprehension Difficulties, Google Books.

"List of Books," Wookieepedia.

Karen Traviss, Revelation (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 8), Amazon Online Reader.

David West Reynolds (Author), James Luceno (Author), and Ryder Windham (Contributor), The Ultimate Guide to Characters and Creatures from the Entire Star Wars Saga, Amazon Online Reader.

"Latest Reviews," The Force.