Core Vocabulary List

When we think about teaching vocabulary, we immediately jump to concrete nouns - people, places, and most of all, things. "Look, that's a banana! Can you say banana?" This approach is fine for typically developing children, but for people with minimal language due to significant language disorders that really isn't the best way to help them. With them you need "power words" - the words that are the most useful across the most circumstances, or which communicate critical health and safety functions.

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Try this experiment. Imagine that tomorrow you wake up and all of a sudden you can only say ten words. Just ten. What would they be?

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As you decide, think about what words would most help you get your wants and needs met across the most environments. Would you rather be able to say "cereal" or "eat"? "Bandaid" or "hurt"? "Water" or "drink"?

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At least in my case, I'd have a grand total of one concrete noun in my list. "Bathroom". That's it. The rest, if you were wondering, would be "drink", "eat", "hurt", "stop", "yes", "no", "help", "I" and "you". No matter what your list looked like, it probably didn't have many concrete nouns in it either.

 

(Note: The list is for me as an adult. If this was a child, I would change priorities a bit and start with "more" and "done", then teach "drink", "eat", "play", "no", "hurt", "bathroom", "I", and "you".  "Play" is important to them, and "more"/"done" are an excellent first two words, so they're higher priority. "Yes" is also as abstract as it gets and only useful passively, so I wait until later to teach that to kids.)

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"Power words" like those are our core vocabulary, and they're both the backbone of communication and will give the greatest benefits. I've compiled a list of 100 words and put them in the approximate order I usually teach them in, based on lists of most frequently used words and clinical experience. I chunked them into less intimidating sets based on words that tend to pair well. 

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Go in the order that works for you and teach the words that are most meaningful to your kids, though! For instance, hug isn't one of the words, but if hugs are really important to your child you might want to add that in. Likewise, if you're teaching in a school "Mommy" and "Daddy" might not be in the first words you teach, but if you're a parent, they might. These are just broad ideas to adapt. Also, I know I refer to kids, but even though the order might be different, this is for anyone working on basic language, whether it's a three-year-old with Down syndrome or a sixty-year-old recovering from a stroke.

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When you're modeling, you don't have to only use these words! If you're modeling on a communication device or core board, feel free to speak the words that you haven't learned yet and touch the buttons for the words that are. For instance, you might say "COME draw over HERE, Amy" as you touch the words "come" and "here" on the device, even if you haven't taught "draw", "over", or "Amy".