And Ms Bryceson now hopes ‘Two a Day: Words to Teach to Young Australians’  will be a valuable resource for teachers and speech pathologists.

‘’I started the research program about 10 years ago and began sourcing words from the Macquarie Concise Dictionary and asking students aged around 5, 8, 12 and 18 to explain their meanings,’’ she said.

‘’I found that, even before they commenced school, children knew several thousand word meanings – words like ‘electricity’, ‘impress’ and ‘pedestrian crossing’.

‘’During their school years they learned thousands more meanings such as ‘catamaran’ and ‘disintegrate’ (during the Infants school years), ‘hallucination’ and ‘isolation’ (during Primary years) and ‘intricate’ and ‘optimum’ (during high school years).’’

Ms Bryceson said all the children who participated lived in the Wollongong area, which may have had an impact on the words they knew.

‘’For example an eight-year-old knew that when there is a southerly ‘the wind changes direction and it’s really strong’,’’ she said.

‘’Most of the words, though, were not specific to town or country, coast or inland.’’

She did however find that teaching word meanings to students improved their vocabulary and their reading skills.

The author hopes that teachers will find it easier to select words to teach from her book rather than always choosing them from storybooks.

She is also developing vocabulary-teaching videos (based on words from the book) for use in schools.

‘Two a Day: Words to Teach to Young Australians’ is available from bryceson.com.au

Read more: Scholarship success for UOW PhD candidate