As Ravid & Tolchinsky (2002) have indicated in their article, literacy has
profound effects upon the development of language in school-age children,
adolescents, and adults. Once children are able to read proficiently – typically
by eight or nine years – their ability to acquire increasingly sophisticated
aspects of language can expand greatly. The convergence of language and
literacy is readily apparent upon examining the lexicon, a language domain
that is subject to unlimited growth through the lifespan. For this reason, I
would like to elaborate on the role of literacy in relation to lexical development
beyond the preschool years, focusing on processes that facilitate the learning
of word meanings. In this commentary, it will be shown that there is an
ongoing reciprocal relationship between lexical development and literacy in
which unfamiliar words are first encountered in print and learned through
various metalinguistic strategies. Subsequently, this increased knowledge of
words leads to improved comprehension of text, which in turn, leads to
further expansion of the lexicon (Sternberg & Powell, 1983).