Media text –synthesising skills: An article for ‘Baby and Pregnancy magazine’ – a guide of how parents can teach their baby/toddler to speak

Banning your baby’s babbling

A guide for you, the parents, on how to teach your child the second-most spoken language in the world.

When you’re a parent, and your child has reached that age when they are starting to join us in learning our language, you can sometimes feel a bit pointless and confused in this learning spectrum. But that’s where I come in; I’m here to guide you on how you can aid your little ray of sunshine in their early learning years.

As a parent, it’s important to know your personal part you can play in their learning curve, and there are many simple things you can do to help enhance your toddler’s progression.

Child expert ‘Caroline Bowen’ said that at the age of around 1-2 years old, your child should be at the level of being able to follow easy and simple instructions such as “Where is your arm?” and “Point to the car!” for example. So work on simple questions like these can go a long way and prove to be very effective in developing their understanding of structuring sentences. Bowen also went on to say that at this age, your child is likely to enjoy things like listening to simple stories and singing songs/saying rhymes. Repetition of these techniques is something that they would ask you to do, if they could!

Whilst doing these techniques, another non-language feature you can use to help is the excessive use of both hand and body movements. This will help greatly as it will intrigue them and keep them interested in you. If you are able to keep them interested and have their attention, it is much more likely that they will take in what you are saying and provide you with feedback. Similarly, the use of entertaining and exaggerated facial expressions are another option you can use to keep their attention, and this could prove to be more useful as it will have them looking at your face – exactly where you want them looking ideally.

All of these aspects and features, although useful, will only be effective if you manage to do one thing: Talk to your baby as often as you can. Your baby will require you to speak clearly and also fairly-slowly to them if you want them to learn. Remember what Ogden Nash said in his poem ‘It must be the milk’ – “Their pronunciation is awful.” So they are counting on you to provide both the language, and the successful pronunciation of words. So if you are mumbling when talking – you can guarantee that they will have a hard time picking up what you’re saying.

Furthermore, something you MUST remember is that although it’s important to interact with your child and speak with them as much as you can, with using the techniques as said above, a vital aspect you need to take into account is being aware when you are talking to someone other than your child. It’s very important to always remember how much your child can pick up just from copying your personal language use. So in this sense, it’s almost like you’re teaching your child to talk, whilst not even interacting with them...so bear that in mind!