Language Learning

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

Something of interest- studies have found that young children who can easily repeat back made-up words are likely to acquire a good vocabulary. Researchers have also found that non-word repetition at age four is a good predictor of vocabulary and reading skills at age five. Difficulty in repeating non-words might indicate future problems with regard to learning foreign languages and acquiring vocabulary.
Simple test for slightly older children– Ask your child to repeat back each of the listed non words immediately after you say it. Good scores by age group match the scores of relatively high achieving children of high socioeconomic status from Cambridge, England.

Good Scores: At Least the number indicated

Four-year olds Five-year olds six-year olds
One-syllable One-syllable One-syllable
At least 5 at least 7 at least 8

Two-syllable Two-syllable Two-syllable
At least 5 at least 7 at least 8

Three-syllable Three-syllable Three-syllable
At least 4 at least 6 at least 7

Four-syllable Four-syllable Four-syllable
At least 3 at least 5 at least 6

One-syllable non-words Two-syllable non-words
Sep Grall Pennel Ballop
Hond Fot Rubid Diller
Bift Nate Bannow Hampent
Smip Thip Glistow Sladding
Clird Tull Tafflest Prindle

Three-syllable non-words Four-syllable non-words

Doppelate Bannifer Woogalamic Fenneriser
Barrazon Commerine Commeecitate Loddenapish
Thickery Glistering Penneriful Contramponist
Frescovent Trumpertine Perplisteronk Blonterstaping
Brasterer Skiticult Stopograttic Empliforvent

Please see link to normal hearing development in children

http://www.drpaul.com/growth/hearing.html

Kids’ hearing losses often go undetected

http://blog.oregonlive.com/themombeat/2009/06/kids_hearing_losses_often_go_u.html

Hope that you found this interesting.

2

The earlier post highlights the importance of talking to our babies to increase verbal intelligence, vocabulary size, reading ability, and other language skills. Research and my experience has shown that the more a parent speaks to their child the more rapidly vocabulary will grow.

Hearing Problems and Vocabulary: It is important to have your child’s hearing checked.

• Vocabulary develops more slowly in children who have hearing loss.
• Children with hearing loss learn concrete words like cat, jump, five, and red more easily than abstract words like before, after, equal to, and jealous. They also have difficulty with function words like the, an, are, and a.
• The gap between the vocabulary of children with normal hearing and those with hearing loss widens with age. Children with hearing loss do not catch up without intervention.
• Children with hearing loss have difficulty understanding words with multiple meanings. For example, the word bank can mean the edge of a stream or a place where we put money.

Your child is also more likely to learn the name of objects if you label/name what your baby is looking at rather than trying to redirect their attention. In addition, it is important to realise that at around 4 years children assume that they are like their parents, so it is crucial that we pay attention to our vocabulary, and show an interest in words. I bought a good dictionary to show my children that words are interesting. My children were constantly asking be about the meaning of new words and the dictionary enabled me to provide a more detailed answer-origins etc. Happy parenting-

Chris.

3

Researchers have found that babies, before 6 months of age, have the ability to hear and distinguish between all the sounds of every human language. Around 6 months of age they begin to lose this ability as they learn their native tongue. If they are exposed to the sounds of different languages at a very early age, those sounds will be imprinted in their brain cells and they will have an easier time learning those languages when they are older. They may even be able to speak without an accent!

Listening to music sung in a different language daily might help your baby develop foreign language skills.

Babies Come Into the World Ready To Learn Language

http://www.extension.org/pages/Babies_Come_Into_the_World_Ready_To_Learn_Language

Chris

4

That’s great info, Chris! Bunch of karma to you!

5

So funny - my husband does this all the time with our son just for fun! I thought he was messing him up and have been discouraging it!! I’ll have to send this to him!! Crazy!!

6

As a speech-language pathologist, we commonly work with children with reading and language disorders (such as dyslexia). It is common to use nonsense words and syllables with these children. If they are able to understand the phonetic principles in nonsense words, they they can easily read ‘real’ words.

A side note-My daughter said her first 5 syllable word when she was 2 years old. She learned it from the Campbell’s soup commerical…“Possibilities!”. She would hear it and run around saying it excitedly…it was pretty funny! Needless to say, she is 3.5 yo now and is reading at the 1st grade level and learning vocab at the 1st grade level too (such as dawdle, adventure, immense, pester).