Latonya Bolton, age 14, of Lynn, Mass., for her question:

HOW MANY WORDS ARE IN A PERSON'S VOCABULARY?

A person has two kinds of vocabularies: his active or "use" vocabulary that is made up of words he uses in speaking or writing, and his passive or "recognition" vocabulary that is made up of words he understands when listening or reading.

The average American has a use vocabulary of about 10,000 words and a recognition vocabulary of between 30,000 and 40,000 words.

Vocabulary is a word that means the total number of words in a language. It also is the collection of words a person knows and uses in speaking or writing. Although we don't know the exact number of words in the English vocabulary today, we do know that it contains at least 600,000 words.

A person builds his vocabulary throughout his life. A child entering school for the first time may know only from 3,000 to 4,000 words. But by the time he has completed college, he may understand or use from 10,000 to 30,000 words.

Control over words, leading educators agree, is often the same as control over the ideas the words represent.