Strategies For Promoting Language Development in Preschoolers, as suggested by Carole Mugaisi

 Carole Mugaisi

Strategies For Promoting Language Development in Preschoolers, as suggested by Carole Mugaisi

Language development is integral to children's overall cognitive growth and can play an invaluable role in building meaningful friendships and interactions among peers.

Motivating children to use their language can be challenging, but there are various strategies you can employ to do so effectively. You could try talking to them, reading them, and even making funny noises as part of this approach.

1. Talk to Your Child

Talking with children is a great way to help them acquire language. Listening, responding to their sounds (ma, da, and ba), discussing topics of interest, and reading books together help children gain language.

Make talking part of your daily routine, for example, at meal times, walks around the neighborhood, and bath time. Varying voices and using silliness may help attract their attention and get them talking back - be wary not to over-praising as this could put them off trying to communicate! Repetition is also crucial: children need repeated exposure to new words to become part of their lexicons.

2. Read Books

Reading books together can be an excellent way to bond with your children and build their language skills. Reading sessions don't need to be planned - any time spent reading to your kids will help them learn new words while creating positive associations between literacy and them.

Your children may enjoy reading picture books with vivid colors or lift-the-flap books that encourage more parent-child interaction than digital books. When selecting physical (paper) books for reading aloud, always choose them over digital ones, as these provide more opportunities to connect.

Children become motivated to communicate when they're engaged with something, so reading books about topics they find captivating is a powerful way to foster language development. As noted by Carole Mugaisi, reading about animals may help preschoolers identify animal sounds, while books about places and cultures teach young ones about other worlds.

3. Sing Songs

Children learn a great deal of vocabulary through songs. Even simple tunes contain many words. Children who develop larger vocabularies early often achieve better academic success at school.

Singing songs can also help children develop auditory memory - an invaluable academic skill that can aid all areas of learning, including reading.

Kids love to sing and often don't feel self-conscious about their voices when singing songs that involve repetition, rhymes, and rhythm. Rhymes help develop phonological awareness - essential for reading - while singing songs about daily routines, animals, food, and drink can broaden vocabularies further. Pausing during predictable activities - such as singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" with each child filling in blanks - can also facilitate language development.

4. Have Fun Together

Hanen programs for parents aim to help families have fun together as part of their interaction goals, as research indicates that children learn to communicate most efficiently when engaging in fun, extended interactions with their caregivers. Playing games and acting out stories help children build language skills.

Imitating children's sounds and words helps develop their receptive language (listening and understanding). Furthermore, imitating helps develop turn-taking and encourages them to repeat your more complex speech utterances.

Playing games that encourage children to interact, such as guessing who or what something is, promotes expressive language skills. Meanwhile, dramatic play organized around themes can provide children with an outlet for their imagination while building upon existing vocabulary, as per Carole Mugaisi. The more children participate in such activities, the better off!

5. Make Your Child Emote

Attracting children with emotional needs and providing them with the means to express them constructively are crucial components of language acquisition. This helps children express themselves more freely while strengthening peer relationships - thus decreasing frustration and tantrums.  

Children begin developing receptive language skills long before they utter their first words, such as understanding sounds and speech rhythms and recognizing their mother or father's voices and tones.

Carole Mugaisi mentions that puppets or toys can also help develop their receptive language skills and help them talk and read with their kids. Label pictures for them to speak about and read to your kids to identify what's happening or ask questions to ensure they understand.

Do not be shy about making funny noises and silly faces when playing with your child - this will capture their interest and encourage them to emulate you and repeat more complex language phrases you make.

6. Sit Facing Your Child

For children to successfully learn their first words, it is vital that they can see your face while speaking to them. Although this may require changing how you typically interact with them, this approach can significantly aid their language development.

Position them so they are close by you, such as during bath time or playing at the coffee table, so they cannot move far away. Or use playthings that encourage storytelling or pretend play, like doctor kits and firefighter costumes.

Carole Mugaisi suggests that when communicating with children who can't see your face, be careful not to interrupt their flow of conversation or issue directives. Instead, try rephrasing their mispronounced words and having them repeat them back for you.

7. Make Funny Noises

Kids love imitating sounds, so why not try making fun noises together? Although you might initially feel silly, making silly noises will get their attention and encourage them to talk back. Start with back-and-forth babble before gradually adding consonant sounds such as "tuh-tuh-tuh" or other barnyard noises. Sing classic songs with sound effects, such as Old McDonald Had a Farm and Wheels on the Bus, to keep things fun for both of you!

Toddlers and preschoolers enjoy humor, so have a selection of humorous books available - picture books with silly rhymes or nonsense words, for instance - or keep creative waste materials such as paper plates, wool pieces, and glue in stock to help foster imaginative play and develop language skills in creative scenarios.

8. Sing Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes provide children with patterns and sequencing (similar to a story-like format of many verses), helping them remember and improve their speech production - helping them pronounce sounds correctly more efficiently and identify individual phonemes that makeup words.

These songs can help children develop math skills by including numbers, counting (both forwards and backward), talking about size, and other crucial mathematical vocabulary words. Furthermore, children can clap or tap along to these songs, honing rhythmic and movement abilities at the same time!

Singing nursery rhymes together is an incredible way to build bonds and increase verbal interaction between you and your child. Children tend to listen more attentively if they enjoy hearing a particular tune more than once, thus maximizing learning from it.

9. Talk to Your Child in Different Voices

Altering your voice can make interactions with children more fun. Converting it into high-pitched speech, using amusing noises, or making silly faces are all great ways to grab their attention. Asking open-ended questions that allow children to respond is also crucial.

Research has demonstrated the correlation between language development and future academic success, and children with small vocabulary sizes in preschool perform worse academically than those with larger vocabularies, so we must assist them in learning new words.

Parents play an essential role in their child's language development, providing them the communication tools. Talking, reading, singing, and playing together are excellent ways to foster language growth; children are more likely to reach communication milestones when given an engaging, supportive environment to grow their language skills.

10. Make It Fun

As you work with preschoolers, ensure ample opportunities for them to express themselves verbally. You can do this by encouraging their use of imagination, using a question-and-answer format, or letting them take turns in conversations (such as scaffolding and narrative talk).

According to Carole Mugaisi, as children play with dolls, you can pretend to be a sports commentator by providing commentary about what's going on ("That red car is driving around in circles" or "The cow is napping"). This helps them develop vocabulary, grammar, and attention skills while building more robust language acquisition.