The world of preschoolers is full of wonder, excitement, and lots of conversation. This era of childhood can be marked by the neverending question of “why?”. Why do I have a belly button? Why do we eat food? Why does the sun go away at night? Increasing brain development combined with an expanding vocabulary set the stage for children to engage in complex activities and conversation.

A child’s vocabulary expands between the ages of 2–6 from about 200 words to over 10,000 words through a process called fast-mapping. Words are easily learned by making connections between new words and concepts already known. The parts of speech that are learned depend on the language and what is emphasized. For example, children speaking verb-friendly languages such as Chinese and Japanese, tend to learn nouns more readily. But, those learning less verb-friendly languages such as English, seem to need assistance in grammar to master the use of verbs (Imai et al., 2008).

Children can repeat words and phrases after having heard them only once or twice, but they do not always understand the meaning of the words or phrases. This is especially true of expressions or figures of speech which are taken literally. For example, a classroom full of preschoolers hears the teacher say, “Wow! That was a piece of cake!” The children began asking “Cake? Where is my cake? I want cake!”

Children learn rules of grammar as they learn language but may apply these rules too generally. This process is known as overregulation. For instance, a child learns to add “ed” to the end of a word to indicate past tense. Then form a sentence such as “I goed there. I doed that.” This is typical at ages two and three and is a sign of increasing intelligence. Children will soon learn new words such as “went” and “did” to be used in those situations.

Do you remember Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development? Children can be assisted in learning language by others who listen attentively, model more accurate pronunciations and encourage elaboration. The child exclaims, “I’m goed there!” and the adult responds, “You went there? Say, ‘I went there.’ Where did you go?” Children may be ripe for language as Chomsky suggests, but active participation in helping them learn is important for language development as well. The process of scaffolding is one in which the guide provides needed assistance to the child as a new skill is learned.