Learning to Talk

            Literacy does not begin when a child begins to read, but actually far before that. Early literacy encompasses this pre-reading timeframe, which includes singing, playing, and of course learning to talk. Everything I have been learning in this course has made me extremely interested in how a child learns to speak.

            The first year of a child’s life is crucial to language development. Most parents begin speaking to their infants in what’s called Parentese. Parentese is the use of sing-song speech and exaggerated facial expression that is almost always used around babies (PBS Parents, 2003). This elongated way of speaking is utilized by parents and family around the world and with good reason, babies love the sound (PBS Parents, 2003). Infants will turn their head to the sound of Parentese regardless of the language spoken (PBS Parents, 2003). Further, research shows "The elongated vowels, high pitch, exaggerated facial expressions and short, simple sentences actually help infants learn language," (PBS Parents, 2003, Parentese Helps Babies Learn Language section, para. 1). Speaking to babies is critical to their language development and speaking in Parentese helps to engage them and allows them to hear the syllables in every word. The more they hear, the more they are able to try to replicate.

            Infants pick up on every syllable and sound spoken around them. In the Ted Talk featured below Patricia Kuhl discusses infant language development. In her study she compared the reaction to the English “r” and “l” sounds in English speaking and Japanese speaking children (TED, 2011). She notes that children aged 6-8 months are able to react to the sounds of most all languages but by the time the child reaches the age of 10-12 months they begin to lose this ability (TED, 2011). Instead the children have created internal statistics on the sounds they have heard and have begun to focus solely on the language they hear most frequently (TED, 2011). Infants 8 months and under then are primed to learn as many sounds as possible. Their brains are open and mapping every sound they hear in order to produce the language later in life. This is why the first years is so vital to a child’s development and later literacy. Speaking and interacting with children allows them to develop these skills as they listen and learn from their caregiver. Feel free to watch to the Ted Talk below and leave a comment with your thoughts.

References

PBS Parents. (2003). Speak parantese, not baby talk. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/parents/child-development/baby-and-toddler/baby-talk-speaking-parentese/

TED. (2011, Feb 18). Patricia Kuhl: The linguistics of babies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XBIkHW954