Winnie the Pooh and a language lift too.Winnie the Pooh and a language lift too Parents who change the way they read picture books to their children, by adopting a few simple techniques designed to increase a child's active participation, may substantially boost the youngsters' language development. Hard to believe? It's no fairy tale fairy tale Simple narrative typically of folk origin dealing with supernatural beings. Fairy tales may be written or told for the amusement of children or may have a more sophisticated narrative containing supernatural or obviously improbable events, scenes, and personages , say Grover J. Whitehurst and his colleagues at the State University of New York (body) State University of New York - (SUNY) The public university system of New York State, USA, with campuses throughout the state. at Stony Brook Stony Brook may refer to: Massachusetts:
The psychologists recruited 30 middle-class parents and their 2- to 3-year-old children. Half the children participated in a month-long, at-home experimental reading program; the rest served as controls. In the experimental group, one of each child's parents -- usually the mother -- received a 1-hour training session. Rather than simply reading a story straight through, these parents were encouraged to ask open-ended questions A closed-ended question is a form of question, which normally can be answered with a simple "yes/no" dichotomous question, a specific simple piece of information, or a selection from multiple choices (multiple-choice question), if one excludes such non-answer responses as dodging a . They were told to avoid asking children to point out objects or posing "yes/no" questions. One example is asking "What is Eeyore doing?" instead of "Is Eeyore lying down?" Experimental-group parents also were instructed to expand on their children's answers, suggest alternative posibilities, praise correct answers and pose progressively more challenging questions. Control-group parents read in their customary fashion. All families taped their reading sessions at home. Analysis of the tapes demonstrated that experimental-group parents did indeed follow the training instructions. Children in the two groups did not differ on measures of language development at the start of the study. But at the end of one month, those who completed the new reading regimen regimen /reg·i·men/ (rej´i-men) a strictly regulated scheme of diet, exercise, or other activity designed to achieve certain ends. reg·i·men n. 1. were 8.5 months ahead of control youngters on a test of verbal expression Noun 1. verbal expression - the communication (in speech or writing) of your beliefs or opinions; "expressions of good will"; "he helped me find verbal expression for my ideas"; "the idea was immediate but the verbalism took hours" verbalism, expression and 6 months ahead on a vocabulary test vocabulary test A component of IQ tests in which a person is asked to define words of varying level of difficulty, and use them in context, which provides the examiner with a measure of the person's intellectual achievement and aptitude. See IQ test. , report the researchers in the July DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY developmental psychology Branch of psychology concerned with changes in cognitive, motivational, psychophysiological, and social functioning that occur throughout the human life span. . The verbal expression test requires the child to tell an experimenter as much as possible about various objects. Nine months later, children in the experimental group showed a developmental advantage of 6 months. Parents in the control group, notes Whitehurst, read as frequently to their children as did parents in the experimental group -- nearly eight times per week. "[Language] differences," he contends, "were the result of a brief experimental reading program that required about an hour of direct training for parents." |
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