Australian children share a strong common verbal culture despite gender, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic differences, new research suggests.

The research, undertaken by the University of Melbourne and Oxford University Press (OUP) aimed to investigate the words most frequently used in young children’s writing and was conducted in 2007 in Victoria and South Australia by analysing the written work of 1000 young school children.

Five writing samples were collected from children in their first year of school and three from children in their second and third years. The objective of the study was to tap into children’s relatively unconstrained expression to show evidence of their preferred word choices and to throw light on their personal lives, skills and interests.

“When Australian children write stories and convey images and messages about their lives, experiences and values they are speaking more than a common language; they are expressing a shared communal and national culture,” says Professor Joseph Lo Bianco, Chair of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne.

The results of the study provided a data base of children’s words which have been used to create the Oxford Wordlist, containing the 307 most frequently used words by children in their first three years of school.

Wordlists are used in classrooms and often form the basis for reading, writing and spelling lists. They are also used by authors and teachers in designing educational texts.

The research study by Professor Joseph Lo Bianco and lecturer Ms Janet Scull, with researchers from OUP, examined 73 430 words from boys and 86 808 from girls taken from writing where the children had decided what they would write.

The most commonly used word was ‘I’ followed by ‘the’ with ‘mum’ coming in at number 34 and ‘dad’ at number 35; words such as Playstation and Xbox were omitted from the list as technology-related words quickly date.

“One interesting finding from the study is the generational differences we see in Australian children compared with the last such study undertaken 30 years ago. There is much less formality now with the virtual disappearance of terms such as Sir, Mr and Mrs, Mother and Father and a big increase in technological language due to the digital world children now inhabit,” Professor Lo Bianco says.

It is only after the first 100 words in the Wordlist that the differences between children emerge, providing an insight into specific groups.

The study reveals stereotypical gender differences: “girls’ imaginative worlds are less dangerous, more empathetic, social and interactive and full of fantasy with the most dangerous character being a witch while the boys’ imaginary worlds are filled with danger and heroism – even the animals are potential sources of threat and the boys are called upon to evict the danger,” says Professor Lo Bianco.

Children from homes where English is not the only language frequently use words which are about family networks and events. Professor Lo Bianco says children from immigrant families write more about food and their familial relationships than other children, repeatedly using the words ‘cousin’ and ‘ate’.

“One of the other differences which emerged from the study was socio-economic – it seems that the wealthier children have wider leisure experiences which are reflected in the words they use such as beach, boat, holiday and movies which children from lower socio-economic groups don’t use,” he says.

The Oxford Wordlist can be found here.