Quoted from the Book by Laura Dyer, ‘Look, Who’s Talking!’
A. How Adults can be a Good Language Model?
Parents are our child’s first and most important language model. What we say or interact with them will affect his/her language development.
One important point to note is:
Never anticipate what your child’s need without letting him/her try to communicate first. In this way, you will instead be teaching your child that he/she doesn’t need to use language to get what he/she wants.
Example, if you always feed your child before she/he expresses hunger or switch on the TV on time for his/her favourite TV programme, he/she will never learn to ask for something because he/she always get what he/she wants even if he/she does not communicate.
Language delays can occur despite one’s good intentions. Hence it is important that parents and caregivers understand how language acquisitions works because their involvement is crucial to enhancing normal development and identifying potential problems. One if the best ways to promote normal development is to provide an environment in which a child needs to communicate without being forced to do so. Hereby are some techniques you can use:
1. Encourage and respond to your child’s attempts to communicate.
Whenever possible, talk to your child about what’s going on. For example, if you are doing the laundry and your child is nearby, talk to him about what is happening. Answer his communicative attempts (cooing, babbling, eye contact and so on) with similar responses.
2. Follow your child’s lead.
Instead of talking to your child about things you are interested in, talk about things he’s interested in at the moment. Take advantage of his already-focused attention.
3. Talk about objects that can be readily seen and events that are currently taking place.
Your child understands you better when you focus on what’s in front of him. Avoid talking about things that are in another room or that have occurred in the past, or what will happen in the future.
4. Shorten your sentences
Your sentence length should be only one or two steps ahead of your child’s ability. If you child is pre-verbal, you should use one to three word sentences. If your child can say one or two words, you should use three to five word sentences.
5. Repeat and Restate
Repeat your sentences a few times when talking to your child, and occasionally say the same thing a few different ways. For example, if you think your child wants a cookie, say ‘Want a cookie? Want one? Does Johnny want a cookie? Want it?’
6. Exaggerate your intonation and stress important words
Emphasize words you want your child to focus on. For example, if you are teaching your child about size, say ‘This is a big ball’.
7. Use simple concrete vocabulary
Avoid big words and abstract concepts. For example, use car instead of Chevolet.
8. Use words with broad applications
Choose words that can be used over and over for many objects and events. For example, go can be used to describe driving, walking, running, swinging and so on.
9. Talk at eye level with your child
Kneel or sit on the floor or across the table from your child to capture his attention. Seeing your facial expression and eyes helps him understand what you are saying.
10. Be Enthusiastic
Let your facial expression and tone of voice show your child that what you are doing is interesting and fun.
11. Involve your baby in activities
Encourage your child to participate in activities that are naturally conducive to communication. Play with toys together, read together, take walks around the house together and neighbourhood, have your child observe you doing chores and so on. Language is best learned by doing.
12. Slow down and pause
Reduce how fast your speak so your child can learn to differentiate the sounds and words. Also, exaggerate the natural phrases between phrases and clauses to highlight these structural units.
13. Create communicative opportunities
Create situations so your child needs to communicate to get something he wants. One way is to let him make a choice. For example, instead of placing all the toys in the bathtub automatically at bath time, ask him if he wants to play with the duck or the boat. If he gestures without saying the word, repeat the word often while he is in the tub.
14. Avoid using baby talk
Whenever possible, encourage your child to use adult forms of speech. Use your Child-Directed Speech to emphasize correct speech and language forms. Avoid imitating and modeling your child’s immature verbalizations. For example, if your toddler says, ‘More ju ju?’ You should say ‘Sure, here’s more juice’, instead of ‘Here’s your ju ju.’
15. Don’t dominate the ‘conversation’
Try to avoid overwhelming your child with too much verbal stimulation. Pauses are natural parts of conversation, and the silence gives your child the opportunity to respond to what you’ve said and to initiate utterances.
16. Avoid too many questions and commands
Model good language skills, but don’t command them. Avoid telling your child what to say or asking him too many questions such as ‘What’s this?’ Some children find direct questions intimidating and withdraw from them.
17. Demonstrate your expectations
Show your child that you expect him to communicate. For example, after saying something to him, maintain eye contact and look at him expectantly. This attentive pause shows him that you expect a response.
Child-Directed Speech
People often change how they speak when talking to babies. You may recall the scene in the movie, ‘Three Men and a Baby’ in which Tom Selleck’s character reads a sport magazine to a baby. He uses a higher-pitched voice, exaggerates his facial expressions, makes frequent eye contact, and holds the baby close. The words he uses aren’t as important as the way he says them. He did it for a good reason because babies respond to the melody of speech long before they respond to the words.
The formal term for this language style is called Child-Directed Speech or CDS. It’s also known as Parentese, and it exists in many cultures. During your Child first 18 months, CDS not only helps in your child’s language development, he actually prefers it! Talking melodiously holds a baby’s attention and eye contact for longer time periods.
CDS Speakers also use the baby’s name frequently and they always use rising intonation at the ends of their sentences. For example, a parent might say ‘Look who’s UP! Is Joshua AWAKE? Joshua is such a SWEEEEEEEET BABY!’
Other characteristics for CDS include slower rates of speech and simpler forms of language. Simpler forms of words (like doggy, kitty and choo-choo) are find to repeat during the early stages of language development because they are easier for a child to say. A child should begin phasing out these forms by age two and a half. Parents should begin modeling the correct form of words (dog, cat and train) when their children are around age 18 months.
Take note not to repeat the incorrect forms of words to the babies. For example, if your son shows you a duck, you should say ‘There is your duck.’ However, if your son shows you a duck and say ‘Dudi’, it will be inappropriate for you to say ‘There is your Dudi’. A parent should model the correct forms without correcting or instructing the child.
CDS Speakers pay close attention to infant’s vowel sounds, coos and babbling, and they use CDS to encourage their children’s production of speech sounds. CDS speaker tend to use short grammatically single sentences. They tend to lengthen the final syllable of a sentence as well as the pauses between clauses and sentences. For example, a father might say ‘Look at the doggie, Phiiiiilip! (pause) See the doggieee?’ These pauses help the baby hear the beginnings and ends of clauses and sentences. They also allow the speaker to look expectantly at the child, invite a response, and show how turns are taken during conversations.
Combining CDS with other types of stimulation might help your baby expand his vocabulary. For example, touching an object while naming it or talking about an object that your baby is holding gives your child redundant information. In this case, redundancy is good because it helps your baby learn. This technique is especially helpful for infants age 5 to 8 months, and it carries over to the ages when children begin to sat their first words (around 12 to 14 months). Redundant information, however becomes less necessary as children learn to talk about objects, without visual clues.
Quoted from the Book by Laura Dyer, ‘Look, Who’s Talking!’
During the first 8 months, babies use various ways to communicate, including crying, eye gaze, facial expressions and body movements. Until baby reach age 9 months, they can’t communicate with the intention of reaching a specific goal. Adult interaction however enhances a baby’s awareness of how his behavior affects others. When parents interpret and respond to their babies’ communicative attempts during the first 8 months, they help their babies develop intentional communication.
B. How do Babies Communicate before using Words?
The Communicative Act
When a typically developing child begins to communicate intentionally, he continues to use methods already familiar to him, but now he uses them purposefully to control his environments.
1. Eye Gaze - Looking at you and/or an object.
Starting at around age 9 months, a baby can follow an adult’s gaze and pick out an object as long as it is in his visual field. Starting around age 12 months, a baby can use eye gaze to draw someone’s attention to an interesting object.
2. Gestures – picking up object, showing it to you, reaching for it, holding it tightly for you to see, pointing at it and so on.
3. Vocalization – attempting to use his voice, cooing.
At this stage, children’s communicative attempts can be placed into three categories:
1. Behaviour regulations: attempts to satisfy basic needs and wants. For example, a preverbal child ‘asks’ for food or a toy by reaching for it and looking at his caregiver. Or he indicates that he wants to be held by his mother by reaching out to her or by crying if someone else picks him up.
2. Social interactions: attempts to gain and adults’ attention. For example, while sitting in his highchair, a baby may take a bite of food, touch his mouth, look at his father, and grin. He uses gestures and eye contact to try to get his father’s attention.
3. Joint attention: attempts to show an adult objects or events and to persuade the person to comment on them. For example, while a child’s mother reads to him from a picture book, he might point to something on the page, look at her, and say ‘Uh-uh!’ He wants her to name the items.
Within these three categories, children use various communicative acts for different purposes. Examples of behavior regulation include requesting or protesting food or objects. A child knows that if he looks at you, and throws his bowl of cerel, you probably won’t serve him another bowl.
To initiate a communicative act, join your child on the floor as he plays with his toys. Choose a musical wind-up toy or some other toy that requires your help to function and that turns down on its own. Wind it up and let it play. When it stops, wait for a moment, and see what happens. If the toy interest the child, he may make eye contact with you, he may gesture toward the toy as if to say, ‘Again’ or he may coo. If he does one of these act, great! Reward him by winding up the toy. Make sure to say the words he will eventually use like ‘More?’ or ‘Again?’ If he can combine two of these three communicative acts, that’s even better. For example, if he can point to the toy and coo at it, directing the act to you, he is communicating nonverbally.
Keep an eye out for other opportunities for similar communicative acts. As your baby develops, he can communicate increasingly complex messages.
Play time is the best time to encourage communication, because you are both having fun and looking at the same objects. You can also try squeak toys, bubbles or any toy or book that requires your help to make it perform.
As your child grows, you can modify this strategy to help him say the words you known he understands. For example, if you have heard him use mo for more, wait for him to say it before filling his cup with milk. When he says mo, make sure to model the appropriate expansion, ‘More Milk?’ Praise him for using words, you can also use this strategy to lengthen his utterances. A frequent request around my house is ‘I wan more’, ‘More what?’ I ask. ‘More juice’ My son smiles when he says this, proud that he can say the words.
Learning to recognize Baby Gestures
There are two types of gestures: deictic gestures (pronounced DIKE-tic) and representational gestures. A baby uses deictic gestures to show someone the focus of his attention. There are four types of deictic gestures:
1. Showing: Holding up an object for someone else to see
2. Reaching: Extending an arm toward a desired object, while sometimes opening and closing fingers.
3. Giving: Transferring an object to another person.
4. Pointing: Extending an index finger toward an object of interest.
Babies use showing, reaching and giving gestures earliest around age 8 to 14 months. Baby generally point around age 12 to 14 months.
Representational gestures usually emerge around the same time as the first words (age 12 to 14 months). In addition to drawing another person’s attention toward an object, person, or event, representational gestures convey some additional meaning about the item. Babies initiate representational gestures at first, but eventually use them intentionally to communicate.
There are two types of representational gestures:
1. Conventional: used as social greetings or markers. Examples include waving hello or goodbye, blowing kisses, nodding your head yes or shaking it no, and so on.
2. Symbolic: used to convey some meaning, usually by representing a characteristic of the object or event. For example, a baby may move his hand in a flying motion to signify a bee. Sign language is an extension of symbolic gestures that parents teach their babies during the preverbal stage.
Using Natural Situations to Help your Baby Communicate
Each day your baby and you enjoy routines while eating, bathing, playing, going to bed and so on. These routines help your child know what to expect and they reinforce skills recently learned. Once your child learns a particular routine, he concentrates less on the actions and devotes greater attention to what you are saying during the event. An unexpected interruption in a routine can capture your child’s attention and become an excellent opportunity to encourage communication.
For example, if your son loves to be wrapped up in a train towel after bath, with you wrapping him up and holding him in front of the mirror, singing the Thomas the Tank Engine song together, if you one day forgot to sing the song, he will do something to let you know things weren’t right. And when he is able to communicate verbally, he may say ‘Mommy sing?’ which indicates his wish to hear the song.
Ways to stimulate your Baby’s early Communicative Attempt
You can try using the following as props to encourage preverbal communication
1. Play a musical toy that stops or winds down automatically. When it stops, wait for your child to ‘ask’ you to turn it on again.
2. Sing your child favourite song over and over again. Then stop and wait for his response.
3. If your child enjoys putting toys into the bathtub as a routine before getting in himself, put the toys somewhere out of reach so he will be encouraged to ask for them.
4. Use a toy containing several pieces, like a puzzle, stacking rings, nesting blocks and so on. Hand three or four pieces to your child one by one, then give him an object that doesn’t go with the toy. See how he reacts.
5. When your child gets out of the bathtub, give him a choice of two towels. Let him indicate which one he wants.
6. Have your child look at himself in the mirror. Then say ‘Where’s baby? There he is!’ Go back and forth a few times, then place the mirror in your lap and wait for your child’s response.
C. Techniques to help your Child Want to Communicate
I will say when it comes to children’s speech and language development, it is best to think prevention. Language delays may occur no matter what parents do, but it’s important to encourage language development to prevent unnecessary, avoidable delays. Parents should avoid being overzealous or demanding, expecting more than a child can produce and not seeking professional help when needed.
Here are more techniques to encourage your child to communicate:
1. Intersection of Gaze involves establishing eye contact with your baby. Get your child’s attention by moving your head into your child’s line of vision and waiting until you establish eye contact. You can phase out this method as your child begins to regularly initiate and maintain eye contact (age 12 to 14 months).
2. Modeling reinforces and enhances your baby’s communicative attempts with vocalizations or gestures. You can use your voice to repeat sounds your baby uses (like ba).If your child is beginning to use words, it’s important to model the correct speech sounds. Verbal modeling naturally encourage your child to talk. You can also use gestures to encourage your child’s preverbal communicative skills. For example, if a frog hops into the sandbox as you play with your child, you might model the pointing gesture by pointing to the frog.
3. Prompting should be used only when your baby is highly motivated to communicate. Some signs that your baby wants to communicate include alertness, smiling, maintaining, eye contact and showing interesting in playing with toys. For some babies these signs might appear right after the first morning feeding. Other babies may be more interested in communicating after a bath or an afternoon nap.
a. Time-delay prompts are nonverbal actions used to interrupt a routine. For example, if a parent and child are taking turns blowing bubbles, the parent might interrupt the routine by holding the bubble want looking expectantly at the child until he initiate a request to continue.
b. Verbal prompts are questions or requests used to elicit general or specific responses. For example, an open-ended question such as, ‘What are you doing?’ is designed to elicit a general response. ‘Please look at me’ is designed to elicit a specific response.
Always reinforce your child’s attempts to communicate intentionally. For example, if your child points to the jar of bubble bath while vocalizing, you could smile and say, ‘you pointed at the bubbles!’ or ‘would you like some bubbles in your bath?’ As with all behaviors, positive reinforcement of communication encourages further attempts.
Another way to reinforce your child’s communication attempts is saying what your child is trying to say. This technique is called linguistic mapping. For example, if your child holds up a stuffed animal and vocalizes, you might say.’it’s a bear!’ Linguistic mapping can contribute significantly to vocabulary development.
Good Verbal Techniques to help your Child’s Language Development
1. Self-talk occurs when you describe to your child what you see, hear, do, think or feel. For example, as you are making lunch, you might say, ‘I am making my lunch, I am opening the can of soup, pouring it in the pan, and stirring it up.’ You can also self-talk when your child seems to be focusing on what you are doing. This type of modeling is great for the preverbal period.
2. Parallel talk occurs when you describe what your child is doing. For example, you might say, ‘Tommy is playing with his truck’. Parallel talk models the language that describes the child’s immediate focus of attention without requesting a response from him.
3. Expansion involves taking a child’s incomplete utterance and developing it into a complete sentence. Expansion should preserve the order of the child’s words and the child’s intended meaning. For example, if your child says ‘Daddy eat,’ you might expand it by saying, ‘Daddy is eating his supper.’ Expansion adds meaning and depth to your child’s utterance and helps him pay attention to a topic he has initiated. It’s a great way to help your child learn grammatical forms like plurals, possessives and verb tenses.
4. Recasting is similar to expansion in that it preserves the perceived meaning of the child’s utterance while adding new information about sentence formation. Unlike expansion, recasting changes the original order of the words. You might change a declarative sentence into a question, a question into an exclamation and so on. For example, your child might say ‘ I want milk,’ and you might respond, ‘Do you want some milk?’ Recasting also models a correct grammatical form after your child has said an incorrect one. For example, your three year old asks you for more milk for his bowl of chococrunch. While you are pouring the milk into his bowl, you spill a couple of drops on the table. Your child may have noticed and says ‘Mom, you spill the milk.’ You reply, ’You are right, I spilled the milk.’ In this way, you have modeled the correct verb tense without drawing attention to the fact your child used an incorrect one.
5. Extension maintains a topic of conversation without necessarily expanding the child’s utterance into a complete sentence. Instead, extension adds information to develop a topic. For example, if your child says ‘Bird,’ you might extend that observation by saying, ‘A pretty red robin,’ It provides a excellent opportunity to increase your child’s vocabulary.
6. Open-ended questions are designed to elicit multiword responses. For example, while reading a book to your child, you might say,’Why is the boy petting the dog?’ instead of ‘What is the boy petting?’ Be careful not to give your child the impression you are quizzing him. Outgoing children usually enjoy the chance to pipe up with responses. But introverted children, could view this type of question as intimidating.
