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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  What’s the good word?
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What’s the good word?

Engage your child in real conversations to improve his vocabulary

Drawing children into conversations goes a long way in enhancing language skillsPremium
Drawing children into conversations goes a long way in enhancing language skills

How can I help my four-year-old son to construct sentences properly? When he is stuck for a word, he keeps repeating his sentences till he gets the word he wants. As a result, people lose interest in conversations with him; other children begin to laugh or make impatient sounds and begin talking among themselves. He also hops from one leg to the other many times while he is trying to think of a word; this too either irritates or amuses people. His six-year-old sister never had this problem and she too sometimes gets fed up and starts imitating him. He is now shy and tends to hide behind books. Are there any exercises I can use to help him with his sentence construction or vocabulary?

As your four-year-old is still just about getting the hang of language and the social use of it, do get the people around your son to show more patience, even if he falters or is repetitive. Repeating sentences and hopping from leg to leg is often a sign of nervousness. This little boy needs to feel assured that he can take his time in forming sentences and choosing the right word or asking for the right word. Language becomes “available" to children at a different rate and pace, and the people around him should learn to give him his space and time.

You could gently tell him to form the sentence in his mind before speaking it out. Right now he is struggling with hanging on to this thought and the construction and finding the right word. Quite a juggle for a four-year-old.

You could engage him more in conversations rather than in just identifying things—something we tend to do with little children. Rather than pointing to things and asking, what is this, what is that, etc., drawing children into conversations goes a long way in enhancing language skills.

If you hold a real conversation—however tentative and faltering—with even a very little child, you are encouraging him to think, feel, choose words, form sentences, articulate his nascent thoughts. Find ways to engage in casual chats with your son (away from the critical eye and ear of his sister and other children) in which you allow him to take his time over sentences. Try this while strolling side by side; part of his nervousness may be coming from everyone watching him while he struggles with sentences, and he may relax a little if he is simply talking and being heard but not watched. Rather than any tools or rules of grammar at this stage, such interactions may help him settle into easier communication.

You could also separately request your daughter to be a little more patient and not mock him. If she’s more articulate than him, praise her for this and request her to help him become more articulate himself.

Gouri Dange is the author of More ABCs of Parenting (Random House), and ABCs of Parenting.

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Published: 08 Jul 2013, 05:42 PM IST
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