Initially, in the infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Babies hear words and mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary. The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading and writing vocabularies are attained – through questions and education – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.

In first grade, an advantaged student knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates into a wide range of vocabulary size by age five or six, at which time an English-speaking child will know about 2,500–5,000 words. An average student learns some 3,000 words per year, or approximately eight words per day.

After leaving school, vocabulary growth plateaus. People may then expand their vocabularies by reading, playing word games, participating in vocabulary programs, etc.

Reading vocabulary
A person's reading vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when reading. This is the largest type of vocabulary simply because it includes the other three.

Listening vocabulary
A person's listening vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when listening to speech. This vocabulary is aided in size by context and tone of voice.

Writing vocabulary
A person's writing vocabulary is all the words he or she can employ in writing. Contrary to the previous two vocabulary types, the writing vocabulary is stimulated by its user.

Speaking vocabulary
A person's speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she can use in speech. Due to the spontaneous nature of the speaking vocabulary, words are often misused. This misuse – though slight and unintentional – may be compensated by facial expressions, tone of voice, or hand gestures.

It’s hard to say this out loud, but I’ll say it, I’m stupid, my brain has stopped working! Why? Because I flunked on my practice for English finals, the practice for the English finals are kind of like regular finals, only it’s not the real thing, it’s just a fake clone.

My mom found out, and she sure is mad. I don’t think I have ever seen her this mad, she kept on saying that it’s a shame that I flunked English because she said that any job that you get after college requires writing in it, even if you work at a fast food joint.

Well, I did some research, and my mom was right. Every job in the world, whether you’re working as a manager or a clerk, you are required to do a whole lot of writing, so I’m going to start to learn English words extra hard for these finals.

My mom found me a website I could use to learn English words called fridgewords.org, which is supposed to help me ace the finals.

People always see me as popular, and I noticed how tired I was of being popular when I studied, I didn’t really see the point of it, which is why I one day dressed like a girl, and not like a rich girl celebrity.

After about a week, my mom noticed the instantaneous changes in my apparel and behavior, she got a letter stating that I was honorary student of the week, I concentrated more then I usually do, and I’ve been more tolerable then I used to be.

The English finals approached faster then I had imagined, and eventually it was time to sit down and do them, and as nervous as I was to do the English finals, everyone had to do it sooner or later in life, and most people did okay on them, so I wasn’t too worried, I did have a lot of help this time so, I think I have nothing to worry about.

Ok, you see there was this big test coming in one month and I had to study. My parents promised to by me ‘World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade’ if I got a +A on the test. But the problem is that I had trouble studying. No matter what, I always got a big fat F. So I decided that I could look on the internet for new ways of studying. And then I found an easy to use site called FridgeWords.org , it has exercises to help you study. Alright maybe there are a few exercises but they’re really affective.

First I added the words I needed to study to the word basket. Then I clicked on ‘my word basket’ and all of the words that I selected were there. Then I wanted to review, so I clicked on flash cards and I reviewed until I was ready to try my luck, I did the Exercises: type in (guess the word) thing and the multiple choice test. I scored pretty badly but I continued to study the words I needed for the test and I did this every time I had the chance until the day of the test.

One the day of the test, my hands were sweaty and I was shaking and I couldn’t wait to get it over with. There were the thirty words we were supposed to study on the test were on the test. We had to wait until next week to get our grades back every day seemed like a whole month. Then finally on the day we got our test results back was here I was shaking I was afraid that I would get a bad grade and never get a second chance,( I know I’m exaggerating here but that’s how I felt). My teacher was handing out our test results to everyone some got bad grades others got good, it seemed like an hour passed by and the teacher put the piece of paper on my desk and the I got… an +A my mom and dad kept their promise and got me the game and ever since I used fridgewords.org to study for word tests.

I always used to have trouble with my English Words. But that all changed when my parents started teaching me English themselves of a website which they made. My parents gave me a test, to see how well I did with my English Vocabulary, Idioms, and Spelling. They gave me a spelling test, and then asked me to define each word, and when I was done, they graded me on it. My score was horrible, I would despise telling it to you, but if you must see the importance of Fridgewords.org, then I must say it, “It was a solid D-.” I only got three words right: active, attend, and afford. And those were the only three I got the definitions right for. But I could not get their spelling right. In fact none of the English Words were right.
My parents were devastated. They have been concerned about my future before, and they knew my education was bad, but this time, I think I really needed to improve my education, before my parents got involved with the board of education. And if you knew parents, you would have known that they would actually go and reach the board of education.

So the next day, my parents told me that they are going to make a website. It will take them quite a long time, but they said I needed an example set so that I can follow it, and so I can approach my life with a little more dignity, and intellectuality, and a much bigger reputation.

They worked, and worked, and worked, and every night at dinner, they would talk to me using strange words, that, not only did I not understand them, but I also never heard them or saw them at all, or ever in my life; like: adjudicate, curtail, doleful, imbue, espionage, centennial, and much, much more. I would ask them all the time what they meant, and write them down. They would always give me at least three definitions, which seemed a little weird. The definitions also sounded like they were straight out of a dictionary. That was the point when I started to get worried. This whole situation was freaking me out, and my biggest concern ever was that they said that they were almost done with the website, but they didn’t even show progress in planning it, all they did was study English words like: aplomb, or alacrity.
The big day came sooner than I expected. They had finished the website. When they showed it to me, I came to my senses, and finally realized that they have been working on a website, an educational website that would help me learn, stuff from TOEFL, SAT, idioms, and all kinds of English words that would improve my grades in everything, because in school, you have to right reports on what you learned all the time. And with these words, and this education my parents are giving me these days, I will have an intellectual future.