Language skills progress best when a parent can model the target language form within daily routines. When modeling is used, the parent simply provides a model of the target whenever a child uses an incorrect language structure. An important note is that the child is never “corrected” or told that there is something wrong with what was said. Modeling allows the child to hear a correct example rather than reinforcing incorrect productions. Modeling can be used to improve vocabulary, grammatical, and articulation skills. For example, if the child says, “I goed to the pwaygwound today.” The parent could model the correct structure by responding, “That’s right. You went to the playground today”.
Another strategy to help develop longer, more complex utterances is expansion. When using this technique, the parent restates the sentence produced by the child with the addition of more detail and/or higher level vocabulary. For example, if a child says, “Big dog”, the parent could respond with: “Yes, look at the big fluffy brown dog!” Sentences can be expanded to include new grammatical structures and more information.
Discussing and labeling your actions and activities continuously throughout the day is another excellent way of enhancing your child’s language development. Describe what you are doing or the things you see in your environment. Asking questions about the child’s environment and experiences also facilitates language learning. Questions should be asked within natural contexts and should be open ended in nature. Rather than asking questions such as “What’s that?”, questions such as “Why is he doing that?” or “How does this work?” might be asked. Even more natural is a technique of self talk during questioning. In this strategy you might say “I wonder why he did that?”. More often than not, the child will volunteer their perspective in response to the question you posed to yourself.
There are many ways to incorporate the above strategies into your routine. Reading a book together and asking questions facilitates language development. The parent reading the book aloud and then asking questions/discussing what was read helps language development. The child reading the book and then discussing what they have read with the parent is also a good strategy. Additional activities might include having the child retell the story and draw their own illustrations, acting out the story or coming up with alternate events or endings.
A wonderful resource with strategies for interacting with preschool aged children is: It Takes Two To Talk by Ayala Manolson. Copyright 1983 by Hanen Early Language
Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Parent-Stim-Activities.htm
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