Make Time To Talk
Oral language development includes critical skills that let children communicate, listen and respond when other people are talking, understand the meaning of a large number of words and concepts that they hear or read, obtain new information about things they want to learn about and express their own ideas and thoughts using specific language.
Infants: listen to and become aware of sounds of the words being spoken by the adults around them. Very early on infants begin to communicate their own needs through sounds and gestures.
Toddlers: use language to express feelings and ideas and seek information. They begin to talk in simple sentences, ask questions and give opinions about likes and dislikes.
Young Preschoolers: build a larger vocabulary from the language of people around them and from new ideas in books. They tell make-believe stories and talk about things and events that are not in the present but have happened already or will happen in the future. Language is more complex, with complete sentences and sentences with multiple parts.
Children enjoy talking, it is a natural part of their day. Children need reasons to talk and interesting things to talk about. Shared conversations is one way caregivers support children as they build language skills. Setting up an environment that gives children lots of reasons to talk and lots of things to talk about is another way to support children's emerging language skills.
Reading with children is an opportunity for conversation. Sharing books with children is one of the best opportunities for conversations that build oral language, especially when children are engaged in answering questions and participating in discussion. Ask questions to encourage discussion.
Consider the following phrase, "MAKE TIME TO TALK", to help you remember things you can do when talking with children to help them learn new words and how children can use language to tell you their ideas and needs. Have fun with language!
M:
Mealtimes can be good times to talk with children.
A: Ask questions that encourage the child to think - questions involving predicting things that might happen, using imagination, explaining why things happened in a particular way.
K: Kneel or squat to be able to have eye contact with the child.
E: Extend your conversation with the child. Conversations should go back and forth with each person responding to the other speaker at least a few times.
T: Tell stories to the children and ask them to tell you stories about their families and lives.
I: Involve all of the children in the group in conversation every day. Talk with children about what they are making, ask about their play.
M:
Make connections between themes, books the class has read, recent classroom activities, and children's own play to help build children's understanding of word meanings.
E: Expand on child's language by repeating it with extensions (adding descriptive words, using any words correctly that child used incorrectly), adding to or building on child's ideas.
T: Two-way conversations are best. The child should be doing at least half the talking.
O: One or more individual conversations with each child in the setting every day should be a goal.
T: Texts, such as, books, posters, newspapers and magazines provide things to talk about with children. Read them together, asking questions and discussing them as you go along.
A: Act out stories with the children, re-using words from a book you read aloud with the children. Encourage them to retell the story with puppets, toys and in their art.
L: Language should include rich, varied words that you want the child to learn to understand and use.
K: Keep the conversation going through questions and comments.
National Institute for Literacy, Learning to Talk and Listen, An oral language resource for early childhood caregivers.
