Lexical development in Tamil-speaking preschool and primary school children – development and validation of a vocabulary checklist

Abstract

Vocabulary is key to language learning and communication. It is essential for reading, writing, and forming sentences. Vocabulary also reflects intelligence and word knowledge. To accurately assess a child's language skills, a culturally fair vocabulary checklist is needed. This tool can help predict cognitive abilities and support language development, which is crucial for academic success. Since there are limited studies on Tamil vocabulary assessment, the current study aimed at developing and validating a vocabulary checklist for Tamil-speaking children. The study included development and validation of the lexical inventory checklist, and administration of the checklist on 60 primary school Tamil speaking children. From the results obtained it is inferred that vocabulary knowledge increases as age increases. The study highlights the importance to track the developmental trend with the help of vocabulary checklist.