Tag: development
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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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Read: Language Activities to Improve Speech for Babies and Toddlers
Children look to their caregivers to teach them about the world. Parents play a big role in supporting their children’s language development—and they can can make it fun! Here are 34 language activities from Speech Blubs to help your child master language as they develop. Adding some of these techniques can help to support language…
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New milestones from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has released new communication milestones for speech, language, and hearing for ages birth to five years in addition to feeding and swallowing milestones for ages birth to three years. The communication milestones were informed by research on children learning English in the United States. The feeding and swallowing milestones are…
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Read: Understanding Toddler Words
When toddlers begin to speak, their pronunciation is often less than perfect. This can be pretty adorable at times, but can hinder communication at others. This article from What to Expect explains some common toddler speech errors and why they might occur. It also gives some tips and tricks for helping your child improve their…
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Word of the Week: Theory of Mind
Theory of mind is the ability to interpret the mental states of others, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions. Theory of mind allows a person to understand others’ thoughts and intentions as well as explain and predict others’ behavior. It also allows a person to understand that someone may hold different beliefs than their own.…
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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: 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…
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