Language and Vocabulary Vocabulary in AAC

What is Core Vocabulary?

Core vocabulary is a small set of simple words, in any language, that are used frequently and across contexts (Cross, Baker, Klotz & Badman, 1997).  Core vocabulary contains all parts of speech - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections and serves as a great medium for teaching language.

Core words are familiar and most of them are short - six letters or less.  Only a few core words have more than six letters (for example, "sometimes" has nine letters).

From toddlers to seniors, core's simple words make up 80 percent or more of everyday communication and are the heart of language development.  Action words like "want," "put," "get," nouns like "thing," "stuff," and "people," pronouns like "I, me, my, mine," and "he, she, it, them," form easy sentences with demonstratives like "this" and "that."  Early adverbs like "here" and "there" enable all children to express themselves. "Put it here," "Get me this," and "I want that" are what little kids say when they are building their mean length of utterance (MLU).  Data suggests that children with disabilities build early language three-word phrases with core vocabulary (Baker, Hill & Devylder, 2000).

Information taken from Minspeak.com, 6/2017