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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Word of the Week: Receptive and Expressive Language
Receptive and expressive language are the language we understand and the language we use. Though they are different skill sets, they work in tandem, and effective communication is dependent on both. Receptive language refers to input: it is the ability to understand spoken or written language. Following directions, answering questions, and reading comprehension are all examples
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Read: How Bedtime Stories Can Reinforce Literacy Skills
Reading bedtime stories can help children improve their language skills, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Long before they begin to talk, babies are listening to and learning about the language they hear around them. Reading books aloud expands their understanding of language and allows them to hear words and phrases that might not be
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Word of the Week: Lingua Franca
A lingua franca is a common language used between people that do not have the same native language. It can also be used to describe a mixture of languages where words from multiple languages are combined. A lingua franca is often used between people that oversee trade, facilitate business, or communicate information academically, scientifically, or
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Word of the Week: Semantic Network
Words do not exist independently in our minds—they connect to other words in meaningful ways. In linguistics, a semantic network is a map of how words relate to each other conceptually. This network has points and lines that connect these points. The points are words, and the lines show how any given word meaning relates
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Read: There’s More to Your Infant’s Language Skills Than Their First Words Suggest
A common theme that underpins language research is that language development is an impressively complex process. This article from Very Well Family summarizes the findings of a 2021 study from the University of Edinburgh that gives us a new piece of this puzzle. The results show that babies can remember multiword sentences even before they
accessibility bilingualism communication culture development events feeding language late talker linguistics literacy phonetics speech therapy theory verbs
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