Language development is critical for a child’s growth. It is how the child acquires the ability to communicate and express himself / herself. It helps the child to start thinking and problem – solving.

According to Time magazine, “Your Brain: A User’s Guide” 2009, our brains start to learn words as soon as we are born. At 18 months, a baby has a core working – English vocabulary of 50-100 words that it can understand and pronounce. By age 3, a child has 1,000 words and can communicate in elaborate sentences. By age 6, the child has a 6,000 word working vocabulary and 50,000 English words for conversation.

How do our brains develop language?

Our human brain contains roughly 100 million neurons. A baby’s brain is different. Each neuron is connected to as many as 15,000 other neurons. Each of these 15,000 branches out into 15,000 other ways. Adult brains have about a third fewer links per neuron. This extra wiring enables a baby’s brain to learn languages easily. There is a “window” or language acquisition. The younger a brain is, the faster it can process the information. An age difference of just a few months can make a big difference in the processing speed. This is why it is so important to support a child’s early language acquisition. After language acquisition, the next step is literacy development.

How do children develop literacy?

Literacy development is the multifaceted ability to speak, listen, understand, watch and draw. The goal is to link what is in the printed material to the child’s life. To build literacy, a child needs a lot of experiences with:

• Pictures and objects
• Letters and words
• Sounds, and how sounds (words) rhyme.

Reading

Reading is the learning of printed words. It helps a child to: –

• Develop a larger vocabulary pool.
• Improve their thinking and problem solving skills.
• Help them explore their community, society and the world.

Teaching beginners to read:

• Tutor and reader hold the book together
• Tutor holds the learner’s hand and guides him / her to point to each word being read by the tutor. (glide across the page)
• Have the learner turn the page when each page is done.

Our literacy development program

We group objects together in themes (or stories).

• Pictures (objects) of the same category are introduced in a story.
• Text is written with rhyming sounds as much as possible. (Our brain seeks patterns. Rhyming is one form of auditory patterns.)
• Vocabulary words are embedded in the story. Words such as colors, numbers, sight words, basic concepts and action words are repeated as much as possible in all the theme stories.
• Following directions and interactions are important components

Our work pages include:

• Reinforcing what is being learned.
• Memory recall and drill.
• Learning to organize thoughts with graphic skills.
• Expanding the theme to include prior information and to explore new ideas.

How to use the story of different levels of ages:

• Pre-reading level: Picture-word association. Just learn to name the object with the picture. Color the pages with assistance.
• Beginning reader: Child reads along with tutor. Follow directions with or without assistance.
• Intermediate reader: Read and follow directions without assistance.
• Advanced reader: Expand the themes and words using prior information and experience.

Each theme or story requires repetition. Do not just do it once.  Language fluency requires practice, practice, and practice.

Robby and Molly welcome our young readers to their world!