Lexical characteristics of written language input across primary grades: An analysis of a Dutch corpus based lexicon

Abstract

The lexical written language input aimed at beginning readers may influence reading success. We analyzed a lexicon based on a corpus of Dutch reading materials for primary school children to gain insight into the frequency distribution of different word types, i.e. words with similar word characteristics, both per grade and across grades. The frequencies of monomorphemic, concrete words and of polysemous words remained relatively stable, whereas that of multimorphemic and monomorphemic abstract words increased across grades. Within each grade, multimorphemic and monomorphemic, abstract words had lower frequencies than monomorphemic, concrete words. Difficult polysemous words were less frequent than easy polysemous words in all grades. Some additional explorations on a larger word set corroborated our findings. Our findings suggest that authors of child reading materials adapt their choice of words to the intended vocabulary knowledge level, consistent with vocabulary knowledge development theories. We discuss theoretical and educational implications of our findings.