TalkTogether Blog

Contributing Author: Adhvika Shetty This article was written as part of the TalkTogether’s academic blog writing programme for early career researchers.  “Read books! It will help you speak well.” Many of us have been encouraged to adopt this practice in our everyday life. Reading texts involves the process of understanding spoken words that are written down. Research has shown that texts in books help with language development even before children begin to read formally [1]. One of the key components of language is vocabulary and this blog attempts to further discuss how exposure to books has been shown to promote vocabulary growth. The collective number of words that an individual knows and uses in their day-to-day communication either through words, signs or pictures is known as vocabulary. What then does vocabulary growth mean?  Comparing the language of two 6-year-olds after a visit to the supermarket captures to a small extent differences in vocabulary use. Child 1: “I w...

Contributing Author: Deeksha Prabhu This article was written as part of the TalkTogether’s academic blog writing programme for early career researchers.  Introduction Narrative skills are important language skills that help children to successfully communicate their thoughts and experiences. Narrative skills are also essential for children to tell their own stories as well as to retell stories they have heard. The development of narrative expression during story telling involves the understanding of various components in a story and organizing the events to form a complete story. Rich descriptions and evocative language are only possible when a child’s expressive language skills are well developed. Such narrative skills are believed to play a crucial role in determining literacy development as well as communicative competence, which together play a role in both social and academic success [1], [2], [3]. However, what is challenging for us is to select an appropriate tool to success...

Contributing author:  Kathleen Kupiec This article was written as part of the TalkTogether’s academic blog writing programme for early career researchers. Based on: Nag, S., John, S., & Agrawal, A. (2024). NSP-SCD: A corpus construction protocol for child directed print in understudied languages. Behavior Research Methods. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02339-x   The Problem: Current Guidance and Tools are Limited to Certain Languages Children’s language acquisition and development is immensely important, with far-reaching and wide-ranging benefits that include supporting their social skills, emotional life, academic success, and literacy development [1]. Considered a foundational skill, literacy is the bedrock for an individual’s future, with positive impacts on their educational achievement and quality of life. Unfortunately, without taking additional measures, “an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic nume...

Contributing author: Siyu Ma This article was written as part of the TalkTogether’s academic blog writing programme for early career researchers. Based on: Nag, S., Vagh, S. B., Dulay, K. M., Snowling, M., Donolato, E., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2024). Home learning environments and children’s language and literacy skills: A meta-analytic review of studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Psychological Bulletin, 150(2), 132-153. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000417   Income inequality (i.e., the distribution of wealth across a country) is increasing rapidly in many parts of the world, both in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries as well as high-income economies. It appears that growing up in countries with large income inequality has a negative impact on children’s health, school performance, and wellbeing [1, 2]. However, for children in LMI countries with large income inequality, the consequence could be worse developmental outcomes. This is because children from poor...

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...