Talk to Your Baby and Teach Him to Read

The greatest opportunity for teaching your child begins at or before birth - conversation sparks brain and language development at the earliest stages of life - talk to your baby all the time!

Features : Learning: Early Language Development and Reading

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According to most child development experts, a child starts to talk at around 9 months of age and by the time he's three years old he speaks in full sentences. What most parents don't realize is that children begin to master language from the moment of birth.

The more you talk with your infant and toddler, the more he learns about language and speech, just from hearing you talk and through observation, repetition and interaction.

The more you talk to and with your child as an infant and toddler, the sooner he or she will learn to to talk and ultimately master speech and language on or before turning 5 years old.

Language mastery is one of the most important milestones in early childhood development. If your child is five years old and isn't capable of conversations and full sentences complete with use of tense and quantities, there's a problem. Language delays can lead to social and learning problems, so develpment of speech and the ability to hold a conversation are vital to your child's personal growth and ability to read.

There's a real connection between spoken and written language. If a child learns speech and masters language development, he or she will progress to written language skills. By talking with your baby and repeating words and phrases, you're teaching him or her about language.

Recent research has revealed a dramatic link between the development of spoken language and written language among children, and the importance of language acquisition to basic reading skills.

Many parents believe that the term "language development" implies that the child’s acquisition of language is an automatic process. This, however, is not the case. There is nothing that any human being knows or can do that he has not learned. This is especially true of language acquisition.

The child begins to learn language from the day he is born. From the very first moment it is the parents’ responsibility to lay a proper foundation that will enable the child to acquire adequate language skills.

Just like parents must ensure that a child follows a healthy and balanced diet for optimal physical development, they must take steps to ensure optimal language development.

How Language is Acquired

Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker.

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The baby learns language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will learn language.

An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old he should be able to understand simple words and commands. He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say.

In fact, this remains so of any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one’s mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more so of any second or third languages that a person is able to speak.

This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our PASSIVE knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our ACTIVE (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary.

An important thing to note here is that the child’s passive vocabulary came into being through constant and continual repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby’s active vocabulary.

This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved VIA the passive. Research has shown that a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary.

Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary. This means that parents should create as many opportunities as possible in which their baby can hear them talk.

They also spent a lot of time teaching their children rhymes and songs.

As I discovered for myself through my own son, this over and over repetition of the same stories and rhymes was extremely beneficial for the acquisition of language.

In fact, I took this tradition to the extreme, exposing my son to only ONE book for nearly two years.

Soon after my elder son, Gustav, was born, I bought him a book with the story of Pinocchio. The book was aimed at four-year-olds. Except for talking to him continually, I started to read to him from this book when he was only two or three months old – as often as I could, over and over and over. I found this tedious, of course. Gustav, however, loved it, and the results of this experiment made all my efforts worthwhile.

Not only did he start talking much sooner than most children do, but when he was just over two years, he could recite nearly all the pages from Pinocchio. When turning to a new page, one only had to read the first word or two on that page and he would recite the rest of the page like a parrot.

In itself this may seem quite useless, but of great importance was that the vocabulary in this book soon became part of his everyday speech. In terms of language development, he was soon miles ahead of his age group. In fact, to this day, his vocabulary and his ability to speak with clarity are quite astounding.

When a child is a bit older, one should start teaching him nursery rhymes. Research has shown that knowledge of nursery rhymes among three-year-olds was a significant predictor of later prereading skills even after the children’s IQ and their mothers’ educational levels were partialed out.

While an apple a day keeps the doctor away, talking forever makes your child clever

About the Author Susan du Plessis is the co-author of "The Right to Read; Beating Dyslexia and Other Learning Disabilities," and the author or co-author of four other books on learning and learning disabilities. She has been involved in helping children reach their full potential for 15 years. She holds BD and BA Hons (psychology). Visit her website at www.audiblox2000.com

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