Recent comics

Do you have a question about children’s language development?

Do you have a question about children’s language development?

Ask Kotoboo! Complete a short 3-minute questionnaire to help us make our comics better, and at the end you will have the opportunity to ask a question about children’s language development. We will answer a lucky handful of those questions in our comic posts! Some…

What do newborns know about grammar?

What do newborns know about grammar?

Grammar is the glue of language: it allows us to string words together into any sentence we can imagine. When we watch babies as they learn a language, we may notice learning stages. First, babies will practice making sounds, then they will say individual words,…

Does telling stories to a child help build literacy skills?

Does telling stories to a child help build literacy skills?

Narratives are often structured in a certain way. There are characters, settings, a plot, and a conflict and resolution. Narratives can take many forms, from story books to oral story-telling, and their tradition stretches back to the beginnings of human history and across cultures. Narratives…

How can you help a child visualize a story as they read?

How can you help a child visualize a story as they read?

Reading, at first glance, is about mapping sounds onto written characters. There are, however, other skills a reader needs, like visualization. If you read a book series before seeing the movies, you may have been surprised at how different your imagination was from the visuals…

How can I help a child who stutters?

How can I help a child who stutters?

Speech can seem almost effortless. Sometimes, though, we may pause to find the right word or we may involuntarily repeat part of a word. These breaks in the flow of speech are called speech disfluency. Most often, speech disfluency happens because of the content of…

Do languages have rhythm like music?

Do languages have rhythm like music?

When you listen to languages you do not know, you may notice different rhythms. The timing of the sounds in a sentence, or the rhythm, can vary from language to language. You can imagine that each language has its own percussion beat. In some languages,…

How do children learn language so easily?

How do children learn language so easily?

Children seem to learn language almost effortlessly. This can appear in stark contrast to the struggles we, adults, face when learning a second language. Even more impressively, children are learning their native language or languages without access to an answer sheet: there is no dictionary…

How can I help my child read more fluidly?

How can I help my child read more fluidly?

Imagine a robot reading a sentence word by word: The. Owl. Sleeps. On. The. Tree.Now try reading the sentence silently: The owl sleeps on the tree. You may have almost heard yourself saying it in your head. It may seem that we read word after word monotonously,…

How do children learn the difference between a question and a statement?

How do children learn the difference between a question and a statement?

There are many ways to ask a question. Imagine asking if a friend is coming to a party on the weekend. You may say: (1)  Is Jane coming to the party? Or you could say: (2)  Jane is coming to the party? In both cases,…

How do I help a child with autism spectrum disorder learn words?

How do I help a child with autism spectrum disorder learn words?

When you show your friends a picture on your phone or point to a drink on a menu to a restaurant server, you are sharing your focus of attention with other people. ‘Joint attention’ is when two or more people are able to focus their…

Should I translate words to help a bilingual child build her vocabulary?

Should I translate words to help a bilingual child build her vocabulary?

You remember the lists of word translations you had to memorize for each unit in your school’s second language class. Chat means cat. Chien means dog. Souris means mouse… Lists so long they would lull you to sleep.A lot of second language teaching is about…