Creating Meaningful Conversations - researched strategies on effective communication wth your child.

As parents, we want our children to be happy, cheerful, kids who are excited to share their day with us, we want to have great conversations with our children, and that they have wonderful language skills. Here are 3 well-researched strategies to jumpstart your next conversation with your child. But first, here are 5 important tips

1. Open-ended questions prompt children to use longer more complex responses.

2. Be patient and do not override the conversation, let them speak!

3. Really pay attention by maintaining eye contact during the conversation.

4. Sharing life experiences is a good conversation opener.

5. Do not turn it into an interrogation (one-way conversation)! Add comments and responses regularly.

Okay, now, here is the slightly complicated part. What we aim for is a facilitative role in the conversation, we want to facilitate the conversation in a way that improvise our child's speech Your child utters a word/sentence, how can you enhance it? How can you elicit more complex or detailed speech from them as a way of brushing up their language skills? How do you make them effective communicators in the future?

Expansion, Extension and Recast!

They are commonly used conversational techniques by speech pathologists (me as well), because they are just easy, natural, and effective ways to implement. I will explain what they are individual, they can be a bit complicated at first but once you are used to them, they can be extremely powerful.

Expansion means we are lengthening the child's speech by adding grammatical elements

an example:

You and your child saw a dog in the park.

Child: Eat apple

You: Yes the dog is eating an apple.

We are not changing or adding meanings here such as adding the comment 'The dog is hungry', we are simply correcting the child's speech. In return, your child is likely to spontaneously imitate at least parts of your expansion (Scherer & Olswang, 1984).

Extension means we are adding meaning or comments based on what the child said.

Child: eat apple

You: Yes the dog is eating an apple in the park, he is hungry.

We are still acknowledging what the child has said but we are adding new elements to the speech.

Adult extensions significantly increase the sentence length of children (Barnes, 1983).

Recast means recasting the statement into a different format, either a negative form or a question.

Child says: eat apple

You: The dog is not eating an apple./ Is the dog eating an apple?

True, every child responds differently according to their age, some kids may just say 'The dog is eating an apple, in this case, expansion is not needed because it is grammatically correct, we can simply imitate or do recast/extension. All in all, the concept of recast, expansion, and extension is universal.

Recasting and expansion are linked to grammatical development among children of many diagnostic groups (Saxton, 2005).

Feel free to message if you have questions or would love to discuss these 3 concepts as this can be challenging to grasp initially.

Here are 3 daily situations where conversations can be elicited easily, and don't forget-

Extension, Expansion and Recasts!

1. Conversations on the Dining Table:

Instead of interrogating our child directly, eating creates a relaxed atmosphere where conversations are effortless and natural, it also creates lots of opportunities to talk.

The food they are eating, their favourite/least favourite foods, and why

What they want for lunch tomorrow

Plans for the weekends/holidays

About their day in school, what they have done, did they enjoy it, why, how are the teachers...

The list is endless!

2. Conversations during Play:

Pretend play is a fantastic option.

Kids generally develop pretend play (holding up toys and objects, pretending them as different characters) at around 18-24 months (Weitzman, E., & Greenberg, 2002). This creates multiple contexts for conversational speech in children, even for those with impairments.

Studies showed that pretend play of social situations elicited most conversational behaviors between a language-impaired child and a typical child (DeKroon, Kyte, and Johnson, 2002). So feel free to hold up a barbie doll and pretending to play it with your child, observe their reaction, whether they will hold up another doll or ignore you. Let go if they are not interested.

A child-directed approach is beneficial, especially if your child tends to ignore what you are doing. In fact, it is shown that language impairment children learn sentence elements quicker in this approach than in a direct, adult-directed approach (Camarata, Nelson, and Camarata, 1994). Observe what your child is interested in playing, prompt them with open-ended questions or if they say something- extend, expand and recast!

3. Conversations during Reading:

When asked about personal experiences, kids get excited. That is why it is encouraged to ask these questions.

Remember the last time we went to the aquarium? What did you see, did you like it? Why?

Have you played a swing before? How was it?

Side note: comprehension questions should be asked as well to grasp an understanding of how well your child understands the story.

Reference:

Barnes, G. (1983). Characteristics of adult speech which predict children’s language development. Journal of Child Language, 10(1), 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900005146

Camarata, N. (1994). Comparison of Conversational-Recasting and Imitative Procedures for Training Grammatical Structures in Children With Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 37(6), 1414–1423.

DeKroon, K. (2002). Partner Influences on the Social Pretend Play of Children With Language Impairments. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools, 33(4), 253–267. https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2002/021)

Newman, R. (2006). Infants’ Early Ability to Segment the Conversational Speech Signal Predicts Later Language Development: A Retrospective Analysis. Developmental Psychology, 42(4), 643–655. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.4.643

Saxton, M. (2005). “Recast” in a new light: insights for practice from typical language studies. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 21(1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1191/0265659005ct279oa

Weitzman, E., & Greenberg, J. (2002). Learning language and loving it : a guide to promoting children’s social, language, and literacy development in early childhood settings (2nd ed.). Hanen Centre.

Wong, M. (2012). The effects of expansions, questions and cloze procedures on children’s conversational skills. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 26(3), 273–287. https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2011.614717

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Last but not least, here is a link to a free pdf by the State Government Victoria department of education and training that I found extremely useful in preparing your next conversation with your little ones at home!

Making conversations can seem like a brainer to us, but for our preschoolers or even those younger, facilitation in conversations is needed and that for language development (Newman, R,2006). Practice is key! I hope you all find the 3 strategies are useful, tell me your experience if you have tried them. I love them a lot and find them really handy in engaging conversations in tiny tots.

Have a great day and don't forget to smile!

Joyce Lau