A peek into language acquisition: Under the scientific microscope
Reading to a child is a great way to set the foundations for future literacy in a fun way! For example, it can be an opportunity to connect written language with signed or oral language. When reading to a Deaf child, it is important to…
Reading storybooks to a child is a great way to build vocabulary. Our everyday conversations are often about the same activities, toys, and environments. Books open the window to the kinds of things we do not see in our backyards, like tigers and spaceships. And…
Most of the writing we do these days, from emails to reports to tweets, is on a keyboard. It can seem intuitive to also start with the keyboard when teaching a child to write. Typing looks so much easier to do than handwrite. Just think…
As a child is making her first steps toward literacy, the focus is often placed on identifying letters or characters. Caregivers may point out a letter or character, and ask the child which it is. Though reading is largely a visual (or haptic, in the…
Learning to read and write can seem to many of us an essential step in acquiring a language. Yet, the majority of language learning happens before children begin to develop literacy skills. Learning can begin as early as in the womb! A language can be…
It is much easier to find movies dubbed or subtitled in some languages than others. For some languages it can even be difficult to find just a few speakers. Endangered languages are those that have very few young learners, something a lot of us take…
There are many ways to foster bilingualism. There is not one best strategy! To choose the strategy that works best for you and your child, follow the three pillars of harmonious bilingualism. Harmonious bilingualism is based on the importance of well-being for bilingual language acquisition.…
Bilinguals all speak two languages, but how they learned those two languages can vary a lot! The first example of a bilingual child that may come to mind is when one caregiver speaks one language and the other another language. This is called the one-parent-one-language…
Conversations are one of the cornerstones of communication. We have conversations all the time, from very brief ones when we ask a store clerk about a product to hour long phone calls with our best friends. A full-fledged conversation with a young child, however, can…
Think of the hours on end you can spend looking up your favourite sports team’s stats, making each and every recipe from your go-to cookbook, or debating with your friends about top gardening techniques. You can likely remember tiny details about things most people know…