TalkTogether Blog

Contributing Author: Hannah Simmons This article was written as part of the team’s preparation for the 2023 Right to Play Conference hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.  Introduction The home environment plays an important role in supporting children’s oral language development. It is a context in which children spend a significant proportion of their life and the primary location of their interactions with parents and caregivers. These interactions have a powerful influence on children’s development and can mitigate risk factors frequently experienced by children raised in language-starved environments. Equipping parents and caregivers with strategies to support their child’s development through these interactions is therefore important – especially for those from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds.  In keeping with the theme of play for this blog series, we will consider several play-based strategies which parents and caregivers in lo...

Contributing Author: Hannah Simmons This article was written as part of the team’s preparation for the 2023 Right to Play Conference hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.  Introduction In keeping with the theme of play, this blog will explore how we can use play as an innovative and effective approach to child assessment. We will explore some of the challenges associated with assessing young children, and consider how these challenges can be overcome when play is part of the assessment experience. We will also cite an example of play-based assessment from the TalkTogether project. Why is it important to assess children? To appreciate how play-based assessment can provide valuable insights on children’s learning, we first need to consider what it is we want to use such insights for. That is, why is it important to assess children? Assessing children’s learning and development serves several purposes. Those purposes differ depending on who, within th...

Contributing Author: Hannah Simmons This article was written as part of the team’s preparation for the 2023 Right to Play Conference hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford. Introduction Children inevitably use language during play. Play regularly involves children communicating with playmates, interacting with adults, or perhaps singing songs – all of which are language-based occurrences. Closer consideration of how play invites children to acquire and produce language can help us to better understand and leverage the ways in which play provides unique opportunities for effective oral language development, namely: vocabulary, phonology, grammar and discourse skills. (See also our Blog series on syntactic development in children ). Free Play and Oral Language Development As discussed in our previous blog, Perspectives on Play , free play is defined as play which is unstructured and child-directed. During free play, children create and explore imaginative...

Contributing Author: Hannah Simmons This article was written as part of the team’s preparation for the 2023 Right to Play Conference hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.  Introduction Around the world, play is considered a cornerstone of childhood. When we think of play, we often imagine scenes of joyous squeals, unbound imagination, and resourceful creativity. But although play has a universal presence in childhood, researchers have historically struggled to agree on what play actually is (e.g., Burghardt, 2005; Fagen, 1981; Marin & Caro, 1985). In this blog, we will explore perspectives on play, how play varies between cultures, and how different types of play can support children’s development and learning. Perspectives on play Developmental theorists present play as a universal childhood phenomenon which advances with age (Piaget, Gattegno, & Hodgson, 1962). Play is considered natural, innate, and predictable in how it manifests in chi...

Contributing author: Athina Ntalli This blog post was written for teachers and parents interested in learning more about how we can encourage children’s production of complex sentence structures. This is not meant to be an exhaustive literature review on the topic, but it attempts to raise awareness on what we can potentially do based on research findings.  Research has shown that children with strong oral (=spoken) language skills at a young age are more prepared for school and literacy. Oral language skills have been shown to predict later academic achievement and even life outcomes [1, 2]. Syntactic complexity is one component of oral language skills, and its development may help children be more ready for the academic language they will encounter in school.  How we as parents, caregivers and teachers interact with children can influence the mastery of complex sentence structures. For instance, one study [3] showed that mothers who use repetition and expand children’s utter...