Parents can often find themselves staring in bewilderment at the little human they helped to create, write Wendy Goff, Anne Rohde and Bin Wu Sometimes, this bewilderment is centred around awe and amazement. Sometimes, it is firmly entrenched in shock and embarrassment about a specific behaviour...
A new study of Warlpiri language shows how, reports researchers. Parents and other caregivers typically modify their speech when they talk to babies and young children. They use simple sentences and special words, like “nana” for banana. They also speak slowly, use a higher pitch, and exaggerate...
Sometimes behavioural issues may mask a deeper language problem in children, writes speech pathologist Karen James. I love being a speech pathologist. Twelve years of working with people of different ages in health, disability, school and community settings has taught me the importance of communication in...
The minute we start talking we reveal a lot about ourselves, writes Gail Smith. The intonation of our speech and the expressions we use are learned habits and, no surprises, become learned habits for your children. We can use language to build relationships with our children,...
Starting behind: more than half of young Australian kids living in adversity don't have the skills they need to learn to read, report Sharon Goldfeld, Hannah Bryson, and Jodie Smith Around one in three (36%) Australian children grow up in families experiencing adversity. These include families...
“Give it back. It’s Yours.” Samantha J. Carroll discovers that teaching her three year old to speak correctly is not as easy as it sounds. Just after our daughter turned three, she came down with a troubling affliction: pronoun reversal. Yes, it’s a thing. Who would have...
This year’s shortlisted words provide valuable insights into the minds of school-aged children during the COVID-19 pandemic After a disrupted school year of remote learning and virtual classrooms during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it’s not surprising that Australian students have voted for ‘virus’ as the Oxford...
2020 ‘Storyathon’ event shows an uptick in social awareness amongst children in lockdown during COVID-19. Data from Oxford University Press in partnership with Storyathon, the largest story-writing event in Australia, reveals the impact COVID-19 has had on children’s vocabulary, interests and social awareness.More than 20,000 stories...
People love creating words — in times of crisis, it’s a “sick” (in the good sense) way of pulling through, write Kate Burridge and Howard Manns. From childhood, our “linguistic life has been one willingly given over to language play” (in the words of David Crystal)....
Speaking more than one language could make a big difference for autistic children....
