The Importance of Learning Language Skills: Part II
By Andrew Loh
Teaching language skills starts right in your home. Young babies
learn to use rudimentary language skills in a number of stages. Very
early in their life, your children can just babble and later they
will start learning how to make individual sounds. Once they pick up
some word like sounds, they may try to join those simple sound bytes
to form incomprehensible words. More often, we see children trying
to learn most basic words and expressions to convey what they think
and feel in their heart. This is the time, when we must engulf our
children with language by start conversing with them throughout the
day.
Here are some of the simple ways and methods that will help you
develop language development in your child:
1. Read nursery rhymes and lullabies to your child. This will help
your child to listen to the rhythm of soothing and relaxing rhyme
lines and later understand the flow of the language. Experts believe
that nursery rhymes and lullabies have the ability to catalyze your
child's brain cells to understand the musical form of the text.
2. You can sing very simple songs to them, by using your body as a
tool of conversation. When you use different types of body
languages, your child can connect the body movements with the
musical form of text. In this way, your child can relate non-verbal
language with that of verbal language.
3. You can start naming different objects and patterns, as you
describe more about their shape, color and size. Research findings
suggest us about the deep relationship between objects, their color,
size, formats and shape; you can look at your child, while you
describe about different objects. You can even name and touch your
body parts by using different rhymes, games and songs.
4. A word a day is perhaps the best language learning technique! You
can slowly introduce new words on a daily basis. Introducing new
words work very well, when you tell interesting stories with the
help of a colorful book.
5. Simple conversations could be the most effective tools for
acquiring language skills. One-to-one conversation between you and
your child can help him or her in a significant way. You can use
picture books, storybooks, patterns, models, shapes, toy objects and
other similar tools to initiate active conversation with your child.
When you talk to your children, you can teach them the art of
pronunciation and basic grammar. At first, your child may commit
plenty of silly mistakes. However, consistent usage of different
words will quicken their language learning process. When you tell
stories, you will need to engage them in the learning process. Never
let your child become a passive listener. Let the story telling time
be highly interactive and interesting; this technique will help your
child to respond or answer any questions that you pose him or her.
Another interesting technique is to ask your young child to repeat
the story that you have just read to her or him.
6. Let the questions you ask be open ended! Never ever, pose any
closed questions! Open-ended questions will help your child think
about the most possible scenarios and answer in the most meaningful
way.
Ex: How did you do that?
How did you draw that figure?
7. Play time is the best time for learning a series of language
skills, both verbal and non-verbal. Start playing with your child
and talk as you play! This activity will help your child to relate
the action with beneficial and meaningful words.
8. If you have an older child studying in the primary school, you
can easily encourage writing activities. You can ask a series of
simple questions about your children's favorite color, pattern, and
animals. When they tell their answers, you can reread their answers
later to buttress home the language skills. Let your school going
children read from a storybook and later tell their complete
meaning. Encourage your children to tell interesting stories about
any theme; young children may learn language skills, by telling
stories after committing many mistakes, both in the storyline and
language/diction.
9. You may also wish to introduce word and syllable board games.
Many of these games come in the form of electronic tools that have
the ability to say the words in spoken form. Each time, when your
child listens to a word played with sound, he or she can comprehend
it and later repeat to match the exact sound.
As mentioned earlier, your child's basic language skills can grow
very quickly in the early, formative years. They can easily learn
the words, syllables and sounds they hear around them and the words
spoken to them by you. It is just astonishing to know that your
child can comprehend and decipher the meanings of nearly 500 words,
when she or he is just three years in age.
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