Strategies to Support Language and Vocabulary Development

Treat Children as Partners in Communication

Conversations are the building blocks of language development. Attentive and caring parents and caregivers stimulate cognitive and language development in young children. Learning to talk is all about social interaction. To learn language children need to listen to someone talk and to talk to someone. Remember, children need to know that you are paying attention to them and that you value them and what they have to say. What better way to showing your interest than by taking the time to have a conversation with them.

Talk with Infants

Infant behaviours such as smiling, cooing and vocalizing serve as conversation starters for babies. We need to be responsive to these cues and do so by talking with infants and babies in soothing voices and by making frequent eye contact. We often hear parents and teachers talking to babies in their care in a different way. Adults seem programmed to adapt their speech to help in communicating with infants. This distinctive speech style is called “motherese” or “parentese”. “Parentese” seems to help infants hear and make sense of the stream of language sounds they find themselves in.

Talk with Toddlers

Children this age need to hear simple language that is clear and easy to understand. Adults need to remember to enunciate words clearly with children of this age. To learn to speak clearly and to begin to understand how the sounds of language work (phonological awareness), toddlers have to hear the sounds in words and see how mouths are shaped when the sound is being vocalized. Try to use children’s names when talking with them. This helps to personalize the conversation and build self-identity. Infants and toddlers benefit from trips around their home and preschool centre as well as from field trips beyond. Trips like this are a gold mine for vocabulary development and general learning opportunities.

Talk with Preschoolers

Preschoolers’ language development can be stimulated and enhanced by story reading and telling, singing songs, saying rhymes, and especially by talking with parents, caregivers and other children. Talk with children about what they are doing and seeing. Remember to talk with children in the full range of adult language including past and future tenses. Encourage conversations between children and adults. Try to help young children become comfortable talking to new people in different settings. Visit different places where they can meet and talk with a variety of people. Encourage children to use language in different ways. Children need to know how to ask questions, explain feelings and emotions. They need to talk about what they have done and to be able to describe things and events.

Did You Know?

Group Care Strategies

Use Conversational Strategies

Playtime is a great time for conversation because the child is interested in what he or she is doing. Conversation can hold his or her attention and can further the purpose of the play.

The “sportscaster” strategy works to help non-verbal children learn language and encourages more advanced children to extend their vocabulary. You need to take it slowly, so the child can fill in the conversation gaps and add their own ideas and vocabulary.

Think and problem solve aloud to model how to solve problems. You can help children understand the steps you take to solve a problem by doing this. Talk with children about what they are doing and how they are doing it when they solve a problem at playtime. Children learn language though the interactive feedback of asking and answering questions and through our comments about activities.

Use Rare and Interesting Words

Research shows that children learn new words when they hear these words in context. Young children can learn many new words each day in a language rich environment.
It is tempting to talk to children in language that we know they will understand instead of carefully and selectively introducing new and more challenging words. This can be a mistake. As an example of the type of complex language that young children can learn, just think of their ability to learn all the long names of dinosaurs.

Use De-Contextualized Language

Children must learn to express their feelings to have success in social interactions. Children need to first develop the language and the “emotions” vocabulary needed to do this.

Adults use language to solve problems, reason, explain and plan. Most often we do this silently or “in our heads”. Children begin to use inner language at about two years of age. Inner language is needed to help children develop the ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts and behaviors and to think through problems (silently). Adults can model how to think aloud to solve problems and gradually encourage the child to do the same.

Challenging children to think about solving a problem or recalling a past event helps to develop inner language.

At about 20 months, toddlers begin to be able to use symbolic thought and beginning at this age memories and concepts do not always need immediate sensory input.

Create settings for conversation and play

Children use varied and sophisticated language when interacting with other children. Children speak more together when they are engaged in a collaborative project such as creating a “play” or building a structure. This is when there are many opportunities for children to negotiate, problem-solve and use their imaginations. Parents and caregivers can add to playtime but it needs to be remembered that children tend to follow the lead of adults when adults are part of the play. Parents and educators must be careful not to inadvertently lead or drive the play activity. The best role for an adult is to enhance play by providing props or vocabulary when necessary. Observation of the children at play provides the key to understanding what they need to enhance their learning.

Use books to develop vocabulary