children

Helping Your Child’s Language – Technique 1: Modelling.

Jj is for Jottings 55.  Helping Your Child’s Language – Technique 1: Modelling.

Shikha and Shanti as kittens. They have to be careful when in the paddock with the alpacas because the alpacas will sometimes chase them. Although we refer to them as “the kids”, we didn’t have to bother with language modelling for them. Besides, they’re Burmese, and I wouldn’t know which language to model!

There are several ways in which parents naturally encourage the development of children’s language in conversation, and you may be using some or all of them without being aware of it.  Continue reading →

Should I Correct My Child’s Speech?

Jj is for Jottings 54.  Should I Correct My Child’s Speech?

This is Linguine, Kieran’s Murray Darling carpet python. The pic I really wanted was too blurry. Shikha caught a 23 cm long baby brown snake last week and brought it to the front door step to play with. Having just stepped out of the shower I snatched him inside and dressed hastily. When I returned it was nowhere in sight. I found it wriggling around in David’s boot, on the step below! Taking photos inside boots doesn’t work too well. Great composition – reared up with its mouth gaping open – but blurry. Linguine said he’d be happy to stand in (and he’s beautiful and harmless).

 

Many parents these days are concerned that they will somehow damage their child’s psyche if they correct their speech and language Continue reading →

Reading to Children – Some Statistics.

Jj is for Jottings 52.  Reading to Children – Some Statistics.

Even the alpacas are worried about current trends.

 

Here are some disquieting (but not unexpected) statistics and comments quoted by the guest, who is very experienced in education, at the launch of “Aa is for Alpacas”:

Research by Angela Emher in 2013 of 1263 parents discovered that only one in four of them or 25% read to their children daily.  They claimed that making dinner and doing housework, work commitments and exhaustion all interfered with the nightly routine of reading and sharing books with their children.  From this same survey though 20% of parents though were worried that their own children read less than they did at a similar age.  Is the bed time story being sacrificed because of busy lifestyle and at what cost to our future? Continue reading →

Rhyming, Climbing, Miming… (Part 2).

Jj is for Jottings 51.  Rhyming, Climbing, Miming… (Part 2).

Shanti says:
“When learning to rhyme just relax, like me,
Play games and have fun: it’s easy – you’ll see.

 

How do we explain what a rhyme is?  I usually say that rhyming words sound the same at the end, and follow it up with plenty of examples.  However, be prepared for some children to think that you are talking of only the last SOUND.  You might have some extra explaining to do.  The most important way Continue reading →

Rhyming, Climbing, Miming… (Part 1)

Jj is for Jottings 50.  Rhyming, Climbing, Miming… (Part 1)

Geisha had a little cria,
But in this pic you cannot see ‘er!
(With thanks to David for this one.)

 

Children are not often introduced to nursery rhymes, these days, and in fact most seem to have little exposure to rhymes in their early childhood.  People seem to think that the old-fashioned nursery rhymes are silly and don’t make sense Continue reading →

One Letter Doesn’t Always Equal One Sound.

Jj is for Jottings 48.  One Letter Doesn’t Always Equal One Sound.

 

If you have read “Aa is for Alpacas” you will already know this, but just in case you haven’t… the letter x is actually two sounds /ks/.  (Remember that the slashes mean the sound rather than the letter name/s.)  The other thing you will know Continue reading →

Minimal Pairs: Voiced vs. Voiceless.

Jj is for Jottings 47.  Minimal Pairs: Voiced vs. Voiceless.

 

You may not have noticed this before, but many of our consonant sounds in English come in pairs.  The sounds are the same except for the fact that one uses the voice and the other does not.  You’ll see what I mean when I tell you what the pairs are (with the first of each pair being the voiceless one): /p,b/; /t,d/; /k,g/; /f,v/; /s,z/; /ch,j/; /sh and the sound in the middle of “measure”, which does not have a letter to represent it/; and /th/ – voiceless, as in “thumb” and voiced, as in “the, mother”.  A minimal pair is a pair of sounds or words that differ by only one feature, in this case voicing.  Other minimal pairs may differ by a whole sound eg. beg/big; bat/bag.

Before we go any further, I should explain that the slashes (/ /) mark the fact that we are talking about a sound as opposed to a letter name.  This is explained in more detail in the introduction to Aa is for Alpacas. 

When teaching the sounds made by letters, many adults (including teachers) fall into the trap of adding the schwa vowel to voiceless consonants, with the result that /p/, for example, ends up as /pə/ i.e. a voiceless consonant, /p/, with a voiced consonant , /ə/, added to the end.  It should be just /p/ followed by breath.  Voicing voiceless consonants to children confuses them in the following ways:

  • They find it more difficult to discriminate between sounds (because /pə/ sounds much more like /b/ than a proper voiceless /p/).
  • It leads to some children having difficulty in identifying where one sound ends and the next begins.
  • It makes blending sounds into a word difficult because the unnecessary voicing adds more sounds to the word. An example: You are trying to sound out the word.   The two consonants /h/ and /p/ are voiceless, and of course all vowels are voiced.  Therefore the only part of the word which you should voice is the /o/.   /h/, /o/, /p/ = hop.  If you voice the voiceless consonants, however, you get /hə/, /o/, pə/ – five sounds, three of which are vowels.  It will be much more difficult to perceive the word hop now.

Some children have difficulties with the voiced/voiceless phenomenon in their speech.  It’s usually confined to voicing /p,t,k/ or maybe even just one of those, but it is remarkable just how difficult it makes them to understand when they voice all three of them.  And it is quite difficult to remediate, too.

Please be aware of the voiceless sounds and given them a fair go – your child’s literacy will be much the better for it.

 

See also: https://educatingalpacas.com/more-minimal-pairs-voiced-vs-voiceless/

 

 

Children or Feet? Using the Right Root.

Petra’s foot after David had done her toenails (ped=”foot” + filed her toenails. They’re actually cut rather than filed, but I couldn’t resist the pun.)

 

Jj is for Jottings 43.  Children or Feet?  Using the Right Root.

I’ve decided it’s time to air one of my pet language peeves because it crops up so frequently both in conversation and in the media.  I begin with a question: Do pedophiles love children or do they just love feet (which would be odd, but harmless)? Continue reading →