Learn About Language with the MACAW Lab!
At the MACAW Lab, we love learning about language, and we want to spread the love to parents and families! Stay tuned for fun, educational articles, findings from current research, and a new Word of the Week every Wednesday. We look forward to learning with you!
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Read Across America Week 2025
It’s Read Across America Week! From March 2-8, 2025, communities all over the United States are celebrating one of our favorite things at the MACAW Lab: reading books! Read Across America Week began as a celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2nd. Its goal is to allow others to share a love of books
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Word of the Week: Sign Languages
Sign languages are languages that use gestures, hand movements, and facial expressions instead of spoken words. They are true languages, more organized and complex than body language or baby signs, complete with their own grammatical structures. Because sign languages do not use sounds like oral languages, aspects like emotion and emphasis are added with the
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Read: Reading Books to Your Baby or Toddler
Reading to your child is an activity that provides many benefits, and it is never too early to start. It encourages language development in several ways such as by introducing new sounds, words, and concepts. This will ultimately help improve literacy skills. But the advantages don’t stop there—reading allows for bonding, boosts emotional development, and
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Word of the Week: Telegraphic speech
Telegraphic speech is a way of speaking that does not include grammatical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes are the small units of language that add meaning to words and sentences, like the past tense marker -ed, the plural -s, or prepositions like in and on. An example of a telegraphic utterance would be “Mommy feed baby” to
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Word of the Week: International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is a phonetic notation system of standardized speech sounds. It is used to transcribe the pronunciation of spoken words. The symbols that make up IPA represent every existing sound in all oral language. It was developed in 1886 and is occasionally updated by the International Phonetic Association. One aim
accessibility bilingualism communication culture development events feeding language late talker linguistics literacy phonetics speech therapy theory verbs
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