Infants and Toddlers

With infants and toddlers, it is often more effective to wait quietly and let them come to you to interact. If they see their caregivers are watching and listening, they will know that adults are interested in them. Then they will be more likely to interact.

Even with the youngest of our multilingual learners, use authentic questions, such as “What next?” Provide opportunities for “conversations” in the language in which the child and adult feel most confident and comfortable.

Let’s look at an example. Watch the following video (1:09) and identify the conversation strategies the educator is utilizing while interacting with the infants. Make sure to identify areas where the educator could improve as well.

Engaging Conversations

To delve even deeper into engaging conversations, we are going to go over different types of conversations that further support children’s oral language skills. These types of conversations are examples of how educators can make one-to-one interactions more engaging and richer in vocabulary.

Engaging in these types of conversations will depend on the child’s age and ability to focus attention, so it might be more feasible to engage in them with preschoolers or older children. Educators can engage in these types of conversations in their most comfortable language, whether English or another language.

Extended Conversations

The National Head Start Family Literacy Center developed five different types of conversations that adults can have with preschoolers. These conversational strategies are also usually measured by CLASS, the early childhood care setting quality rating tool. The first type is extended conversations.

Even though it may seem difficult to hold a conversation with young children, much less an extended conversation, this is one of the most effective ways to help them learn both their home and classroom languages. As always, the adult should use their prominent language to offer the best possible language model.

Conversations help children learn that talking can be fun and useful, and that they are important enough to be heard.

Educators must be very intentional about when they plan to hold an extended conversation with every child, every day. They also must be good observers and listeners to learn what a child might be interested in talking about.

Cognitively Challenging Conversations

Adults should sometimes ask children who are multilingual learners slightly more open-ended questions and offer new words for the child to learn. In this way, they elevate the child’s language to the next level. They should not frustrate a child by using words without any context. The child may not understand. Educators must avoid using too many words in a phrase, sentence, or question. The child will not have time to process and respond. Conversation should match a child’s developmental level.

These higher-level conversations can involve asking children to recount something that happened or asking them how they think or feel about something.

Contextualized and Decontextualized Language

In conversations with contextualized and decontextualized language, where adults mix concepts and language about present, past, and future events and real and pretend situations, children can hear and use many different verb tenses and ideas. These types of conversations may be challenging to children who are just learning the words to put with the concepts of time and real versus make-believe.

Helping children recall past events can help them use decontextualized language.

To have contextualized and decontextualized conversation, educators intentionally share:

• Speculations about what could be
• New words and ideas
• Encouragement about abstract thinking

These types of conversations offer the opportunity for a great variety of vocabulary words, changing morphology, and syntax.

Conversations with Rich, Rare Words

Adults should try to help each child learn at least two new words every day. Educators can share these words with families of the young multilingual learners so the children can learn those new words or ideas in their home language.

Children learn new words best through conversations because they hear the words in context.

Adults introducing new words and concepts through conversations should use objects, photos, and real-life activities and objects to make the words meaningful.

For example, an educator in a Salish language immersion program talked about tanning hides with her class. She brought in actual animal hides and tools to demonstrate the process.

Incorporating Strategies

Watch each of the following videos of educators having conversations with children. As you watch, think about the conversational elements you notice the educators using that make for a rich language interaction. Think about each conversation strategy we just discussed: extended conversations, cognitively challenging, contextualized and decontextualized language, and rare words.

• Conversation Dream (1:33) shows an educator talking to a child about the dream they had last night.
• Lyly and Dual Language Learners (1:28) shows an educator talking with two children during playtime on the rug.

What conversational elements did the educators use to enrich the language interaction?

Expanding to Other Content Areas

Think about all the strategies from throughout this lesson. Though we talk about them in the context of promoting literacy, how could you apply them to other content areas or incorporate them into your daily schedule?

references

Cultivate Learning, University of Washington. (2019). Conversation Dream. [Video]

Cultivate Learning, University of Washington. (2019). Lyly and Dual Language Learners. [Video]

Cultivate Learning, University of Washington. (2019). Talking with Infants. [Video]

Notari-Syverson, A., Maddox, M., Lim, Y.S., & Cole, K. (2002). Language is the key: A program for building language and literacy. Seattle, WA: Washington Research Institute.