Language Development & Communication
Promoting Communicating & Speaking
Core Finding: LD-COM-C03

Creating an Environment for play, music and reading from early infancy helps in promoting expressive language development.

CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT FOR PLAY, MUSIC AND READING FROM EARLY INFANCY HELPS IN PROMOTING EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Expressive language using oral communication is facilitated when children have opportunities to use language with adults, one another, in small groups or one to one, when they listen and engage in conversations with adults, and when they listen and respond to stories read and told to them. These activities enable children to describe events, build background knowledge and expand their vocabulary.

Play provides natural opportunities for language development. Adults who follow the child’s lead when playing provide infants and children with the best opportunities for developing language skills

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  1. Girolametto, L., Weitzman, E., & Greenberg, J. (2006). Facilitating language skills: Inservice education for early childhood educators and preschool teachers. Infants & Young Children, 19(1), 36–46. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001163-200601000-00005

  2. Vygotsky, L. S., & Rieber, R. W. (Eds.). (1997). Cognition and language. The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 4. The history of the development of higher mental functions (M. J. Hall, Trans.). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Open-ended activities (e.g. play dough sessions or play sessions which do not involve direct instructions from adults), unstructured play and pretend play create excellent opportunities for children to communicate.
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  1. Roskos, K.A., & Christie, J.F. (2011). The Play-Literacy Nexus and the Importance of Evidence-Based Techniques in the Classroom. American Journal of Play, 4, 204-224. (Level IV)

Conversations in these settings are more likely to follow the child’s lead and be focused on the interests of the child. The use of these child-responsive communication strategies by adults has been linked to children’s concurrent and later language development.

Pretend play helps in the development of children’s language skills. When children can use language skills to participate in pretend play, they can have rich collaborative dialogues.

During play, adults can use strategies to promote listening and speaking in infants and toddlers. These strategies include expansion of children’s verbal efforts, open-ended questioning, conversational turn-taking and language modelling have been shown to promote children’s communicative language development. Music can also be used to enhance language learning.

Physical environments can be set up to promote communication. Having toys and raw materials (e.g. cardboard boxes, wooden planks) for children to play with in small groups, on their own, can facilitate communication between toddlers as they have to work together to express ideas, negotiate, and solve problems.

Reading between the parent and child, has been linked to children’s language and social emotional development.

It is beneficial to have a print-rich environment from infancy, with ongoing access to books and reading as this helps to develop the child’s language ability.
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  1. Lawhon, T. (2000). Creating Language and Print Awareness Environments for Young Children. Contemporary Education, 71(3), 5–9.
Reading to infants stimulates listening and language skills.
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  1. Cates, C., Weisleder, A., Dreyer, B., Johnson, M., Seery, A., Canfield, C.F., Berkule Johnson, S., Mendelsohn, A.L. (2017). Reading with children starting in infancy gives lasting literacy boost: Shared book-reading that begins soon after birth may translate into higher language and vocabulary skills before elementary school. American Academy of Pediatrics.
Holding infants and showing them the pictures help with eye focusing.
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  1. Lawhon, T. (2000). Creating Language and Print Awareness Environments for Young Children. Contemporary Education, 71(3), 5–9.
Reading with infants and toddlers also helps parents to be sensitive to the level of children’s language development and helps them to better pitch their language to the child’s ability. This has effects on later literacy and learning.

A study carried out in Singapore on creating literacy rich environments for children from infancy showed that children begin to benefit in early language and literacy skills, when regular reading begins as early as 8 months with reading routines that include sensitive and responsive, language-rich interactions. Creating a literacy-rich home environment from infancy (e.g. exposing a child to be read to) helps a child to be more interested in books and reading at 12 months.

This was found in a Singapore study of 523 infants in the GUSTO studies, who were followed from 2010 to 2012. The study showed that a literacy-rich home environment has a significant association with child-centered literacy orientation at 12 months. Hence reading to the child will help him/her communicate, speak and give the child the motivation towards literacy.

Connecting storybook reading and guided play provides an avenue in which adults can enhance their children’s vocabulary and comprehension skills.

By providing language input at various levels of abstract language when reading or talking about books, adults model vocabulary usage and higher-level thinking skills, thus building a foundation for children’s later reading comprehension. Targeted questioning allows children to engage in the storybook reading experience by interacting and conversing with the adult.

To further enhance the vocabulary and comprehension skills, adults can continue literacy-centred conversations with children by coupling the storybook experience with opportunities to expand the learning through play. By providing props related to the storybook and then interacting with children in play centres, adults can scaffold communication, language and literacy skills through targeted comments and questions related to the books’ themes.

Listening to music is an exercise in receptive language skills (words that children understand but may not yet be able to say). Music gives children easy access to practicing language and deciphering meaning, different sounds and words. Children who can distinguish different sounds and phonemes are more likely to develop stronger literacy skills over time.

Music supports this critical skill because most songs include rhyming (or substituting one phoneme for another). Songs and musical activities have been shown to increase children’s vocabulary as new words are introduced through the lyrics.