Parents play a pivotal role in developing young children’s oral language.

By pre-school, hours and hours of chat will have been exchanged between a child and their parents. These natural and joyful experiences will underpin the development their child’s oral language; their knowledge of words; ability to communicate their needs; and lay the foundation for successful literacy learning.

It’s a memorable experience dealing with the terrible twos when the child is developing strong desires for independence and yet still growing their ability to verbally express their needs. Few parents escape this frustrating period. Then suddenly the toddler has moved on – hopefully!

It’s universally acknowledged that a child’s well developed oral language is an essential basis on which to develop early literacy skills – both reading and writing. You will have found this mentioned many times in our articles in Acing School.

There are many obvious and not so obvious ways for parent to enhance their pre-schooler’s oral language. Let’s look at some.  [Read more…]