Giving Children the Gift of Gab Speaking to kids slowly and clearly aids language development. When it comes to vision, newborns prefer simple sights like circles. But for sounds, they prefer complex stimuli like the highly intonated speech called parentese. The high pitch, slow pace, and musicality of parentese may help children forge the brain circuits that let them identify the phonemes –distinct sounds- of their native language, a crucial step in understanding and producing speech. Parentese may also strengthen the neuronal circuits that tie together sounds and meanings in child’s brain. Some of its features: Speaking slowly and with clear enunciation gives children a clean template on which to model their speech. More important, it literally trains neurons to specialize in hearing a particular phoneme, an ability crucial for learning to read. Emphasizing one word in a sentence (‘do you see that bird?’) rivets the child’s attention. Repetition reinforces the neural pathways underlying language. Scientist have a mantra for this: “Cells that fire together, wire together.” In other words, the more a child hears “bed” and sees you point to tit, the faster she’ll get the connection. But don’t turn it into a dreary drill. Children acquire language not by sitting passively while you talk and point but by taking turns in a conversation. Four-month-olds are figuring out which mouth shapes go with which sounds, so chat with them face to face. And imitate what they say –babies love the feedback. Responding to “bot bot bot” with “yes, here your bottle’ reinforces her halting attempt at words. Don’t dumb things down for toddlers. Those whose parents use many dependent clauses (“because…” and “which…”) progress beyond simple sentences earlier than children of parents who do not. The more you talk to your child, the larger the vocabulary he will likely acquire. Talking to is the crucial part: merely hearing conversations, let alone TV, seems to have little positive influence on language development. From: Newsweek Special 2000 Edition – Your Child __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ >> Cake, parcel lebaran & bunga2 Natal? Klik, http://www.indokado.com >> Info balita, http://www.balita-anda.indoglobal.com Etika berinternet, email ke: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Stop berlangganan, e-mail ke: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
