What is Language?
Language is made up of socially shared rules that include the following:
When a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings completely (expressive language), or understanding or using language in social interactions (pragmatic language), then he or she may a language disorder.
What can I do to help?
The best tools for teaching language are free: Talk, read, and play with your child. Read nursery rhymes, sing together, and have simple conversations. These incorporate all aspects of communication, and are effective tools for promoting language skills.
Language Stimulation Techniques (especially effective for Pre-K children and those with limited verbal skills)
Family board games provide the perfect atmosphere for relaxed conversation while building all kinds of useful skills. Take a look in your closet or stroll down the toy aisle at your favorite store, and pick up a game to play this weekend.
Games that promote language skills :
Outburst, Scrabble, Upwords, Boggle, Simon Says, I Spy, Scattergories, Pictionary, Taboo, Memory, Guess Who, Guess Where, 20 Questions, Go Fish, Hullabaloo, Cranium Cariboo, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, Sequence, Battleship, Clue, and Apples to Apples.
A couple interesting articles on the benefits of boardgames...
http://www.clearly-speaking.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98
http://autistic-child-parenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/board_games_help_teach_children_with_autism
Please check out the Links page for online language activities.
Information adapted from http://talbotslp.webs.com/parenttips.htm, http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/language_speech.htm
Language is made up of socially shared rules that include the following:
- What words mean (e.g., "star" can refer to a bright object in the night sky or a celebrity)
- How to make new words (e.g., friend, friendly, unfriendly)
- How to put words together (e.g., "Peg walked to the new store" rather than "Peg walk store new")
- What word combinations are best in what situations ("Would you mind moving your foot?" could quickly change to "Get off my foot, please!" if the first request did not produce results)
When a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings completely (expressive language), or understanding or using language in social interactions (pragmatic language), then he or she may a language disorder.
What can I do to help?
The best tools for teaching language are free: Talk, read, and play with your child. Read nursery rhymes, sing together, and have simple conversations. These incorporate all aspects of communication, and are effective tools for promoting language skills.
Language Stimulation Techniques (especially effective for Pre-K children and those with limited verbal skills)
- Wait and watch: Look at your child to see what he is looking at – then give it a name. i.e.) Rocket! You see a red rocket!
- Describe: Be the commentator who occasionally says, WHOOSH! … Ohhh bumpy ride!…That’s a big dog!….You picked blue! If you are consistent with what you comment on, your child may start to automatically comment on the same types of pictures or actions. For example, if you say 1 2 3 BLAST OFF or GO every time the rockets flies, your child may start to do that on his own.
- Silence: No need to talk all the time – leave space for the child to make comments, to process information, or to just enjoy. He is learning by doing.
- Copy Cat and Expand: To grow language, imitate what your child says. (He says, doggie – you day DOGGIE!). Then take one more step by adding one more word, as in BIG DOGGIE!
- Repeat x 3: If you were learning a new language, you would need to hear a word over and over again to really understand how to say it and what it represented. Keep this in mind when you are naming objects and pictures. For example, if the picture or object is a bus, you might casually say bus…bus… bus!… hi bus!!!
- Earn it to Learn it: Help your child learn that his listening ears and words are magical because when he listens or uses his words, cool things happen on the screen. Maybe the magic word for making the rocket fly is GO! Each time, your child is encouraged to say GO (before you click the mouse to make it go). Pick a word or sentence that fits your child’s success level.
- Helpful Word: Use the activities as an opportunity to learn useful self advocacy and social words such as: hi, bye, help, again, more, done, yes, no, my turn, your turn, please, thank you….
Family board games provide the perfect atmosphere for relaxed conversation while building all kinds of useful skills. Take a look in your closet or stroll down the toy aisle at your favorite store, and pick up a game to play this weekend.
Games that promote language skills :
Outburst, Scrabble, Upwords, Boggle, Simon Says, I Spy, Scattergories, Pictionary, Taboo, Memory, Guess Who, Guess Where, 20 Questions, Go Fish, Hullabaloo, Cranium Cariboo, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, Sequence, Battleship, Clue, and Apples to Apples.
A couple interesting articles on the benefits of boardgames...
http://www.clearly-speaking.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98
http://autistic-child-parenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/board_games_help_teach_children_with_autism
Please check out the Links page for online language activities.
Information adapted from http://talbotslp.webs.com/parenttips.htm, http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/language_speech.htm