#9. The Importance of Imitation

August 2, 2017 Liz Donnelly

eardrops language series The Importance of Imitation

Imitation is a big part of childhood. At every stage we learn by watching, listening and doing, playing hours of repetitive games, repeating countless jokes to each other and mimicking the words to songs, to name only a few ways that we imitate. We learn social rules by imitation, studying facial expressions and body language – and, not surprisingly, a big part of language is actually learned by imitation.

This post in the eardrops language series takes a close look at the importance of imitation when it comes to language learning in babies and young children.

Well before they know language, babies deliberately imitate facial expressions as well as the sounds, intonations and volume of what they hear, learning the pitch and contour patterns of their native language well before they understand individual words. Once the child becomes a toddler who can say a few words (and who understands many more), they really ramp up their efforts to imitate. Young children need to imitate the language they are hearing around them to help them understand how the components of language all fit together and to work out what it all means!

“Blocks fall” “Yes blocks fall down” “Blocks fall down”

Although it varies widely, about 20% of what toddlers say is imitation. The exact amount an individual child imitates is linked to how much the caregiver imitates the child. Yes you read that right. Caregivers play a vital role in the process, naturally modelling the language by playing games with their babies - like copying sounds, intonations and later, when the child is a toddler, their words. The trick is, they don’t imitate them back exactly – the adult generally extends the child ever so slightly each time, by modelling the right pronunciation and showing them other words they could use in the sentence. This isn’t a conscious process, but one that evolves within the child-caregiver relationship.

Adults imitate children back to extend their knowledge, and also to show that they understand what the child said.

Imitation helps with:

Comprehension

Imitation helps toddlers firm up their knowledge. Most of the meaning in a language is held within the way the sounds and symbols are combined. Children learn the language structure and the individual words through imitation.

Vocabulary Growth

Imitation is vital for the child’s growing mental dictionary. Children usually imitate something that’s a tiny bit too hard for them, which helps them learn. Children with older siblings tend to imitate less because big brother or sister jumps in to do the talking for them. There’s that birth order difference again!

So it’s not rocket science really, the notion that children imitate language while they’re deep in the process of learning it through these early years. Of particular interest though is that they don’t imitate everything they hear. This ‘selective imitation’ is a technique children use to learn more about the language. It is an active process where they choose exactly what to imitate – usually picking words that they may not fully understand or aren’t quite up to yet. A very young child might repeat the nouns in a sentence (‘cat’ ‘milk’) and later pick out one noun and extend on what is said (for example in response to “oh the cat’s at the door, she’s hungry” the child might say “cat” “door” “eat” showing that they understand the cat comes to the door at mealtimes). Children imitate themselves too, talking about words they understand. This ‘self-imitation’ is often a little boost they give themselves to take the leap from single word talking to stringing words together in short sentences. Expert Robert E. Owens Jr calls the strategy of selective imitation a type of ‘scaffolding’ that reduces the workload on the brain. Let’s face it those young brains are working so hard during these first few years! Experts can even take note of what words a child is imitating and understand where that child is at in their language journey.

Imitation tends to drop off from about 2 years old, as the child moves towards being a ‘preschooler’ (in terms of their language stage) rather than a ‘toddler’. This makes sense as they are delving right into the complex areas of language by this stage and need to bring in other strategies to help their learning. Language resources like the Eardrops stories are helpful to use when the child is at this stage. Download them here.

Mā te wā (until next time),

Liz xx

Next up:

#1. An introduction to language

#2. Newborn language

#3 6-12 months and language

Dr Newbury's Research

Information for the Eardrops blog language series was guided and overseen by Dr Jayne Newbury, Researcher in Child Language (University of Canterbury), with the comprehensive information in Language Development: An Introduction by Robert E. Owens, Jr. (2015). This post was written by Liz Donnelly, creator of Eardrops, audio stories that help develop listening skills and improve everyday language in young children.

#8. 2+ languages; the multilingual gift

July 10, 2017 Liz Donnelly

language series #7 title the bilingual gift

New Zealand has more ethnicities than the world has countries. We hail from a variety of different backgrounds and this enriches the diversity of our community enormously. Haere mai! We speak quite a few languages too. In 2013, when the last census was taken, the six most common languages were English (hello), te reo Māori (kia ora), Samoan (talofa), Hindi (namaste), French (bonjour), and Yue (including Cantonese, nǐ hǎo). There were around 740,000 people in 2013 fluent in more than one language, following a steady trend upwards from previous years, so it will be interesting to see what the 2018 census reveals.*

This post in our language series looks at learning two languages at once – bilingual language acquisition. How do families gift more than one language to their children? How does a child actually learn two languages? What are the benefits of speaking more than one language? Read on...

Why learn more than one language?

True bilingualism is where a child speaks each language as if it were their ‘mother tongue’. They are completely fluent in both languages and able to switch between them easily. A child becomes truly bilingual at around seven years old if both languages have been used frequently and consistently from the start. This takes focussed effort on behalf of the adults in the whanau – but it is such a gift. Generally most people actually speak one language slightly better than the other. (An expert wouldn’t call them ‘bilingual’ but they still get a big round of applause and a cake from the rest of us).

When a child learns two languages, they learn two cultures. They are members of two communities and understand the way each group thinks, feels and ‘sits’ within the world. Language is such a valuable entry point to a culture because if offers this different perspective. Experts call this ‘language socialisation’ and it is a powerful tool towards understanding other people’s points-of-view. Bilingual kids are agents of change. Their brains work differently, giving them greater empathy, better social skills, better listening skills and they even learn faster.

Although at first some language for bilingual kids develops faster and some slower (including speech) and yes they can seem a bit confused with their words as toddlers, overall the child is not at a developmental or educational disadvantage by learning more than one language at the same time. If you or another family member are fluent in more than one language, pass that second language on to your child if you are able to. If there is no one around you with a second language, expose your child to other languages as much as you can because they will still reap some of the benefits.

How do children learn two languages at once?

How do our little whizz-kids actually learn two languages then? They buckle down and learn double the amount of words in a similar amount of time, that's how. The child actually creates two language systems in the brain. They establish two lists of words right from the start, two sets of phrasing rules and language patterns, and two sets of speech sounds. This is no mean feat, but they do it. They learn both languages at a similar rate the child learning only one does.

They start with the sounds that are similar in both languages and fly into it from here.

Learning two languages is such a complex task. So children make it a little bit easier on themselves by learning a word, phrase or concept in the language where it is more simple first. Think of this as a kind of zig zag pattern in the brain, where the child dips in and out of each language, searching for the simplest patterns. This is why you’ll notice the child doesn’t learn both languages at exactly the same rate.

In the early days they make a lot of mistakes, mixing up sounds and words from both languages, and the learning as a whole is initially a slow process, because its double what other children are learning. You will hear this mixing from the start with the baby babbling – baby will use both sets of sounds, and later, toddlers will insert both languages in their sentences if it’s the easiest way for them to make themselves understood (making it simple for themselves again!)

Once they plough through this stage though, they are off and away, only occasionally borrowing a word from the other language to pop into their sentences.

After a few years, they will have worked out the rules and patterns of both languages and will be structuring them correctly. They probably still make mistakes in their actual words (just like kids learning one language do – check out our language overview here) but they’ve got the fundamentals of each language organised in their brain. They might show a preference for one of the languages now. Try not to let them lose the other one, keep the hard work going until they’re seven because they can forget!

How to teach more than one language

‘Simultaneous acquisition’ is when a child hears and learns both languages before they are three years old. So speak that second language to the child from birth if you can because it is helpful for the child to associate a language with a person (or group of people). One strategy is to choose one person in the family to speak one language and another for the other. It takes effort from the parent or grandparent to only speak in their chosen language, especially if it’s one no one else is speaking it around them - and they need support and lots of cups of tea. But they can rest assured this consistency really helps the child learn (and they will have a very grateful adult on their hands in about twenty years).

It is important that bilingual language learning takes place in a supportive atmosphere within a family that views bilingualism positively, and where there are plenty of opportunities for the child to speak both languages.

Here’s a discussion from parents at a seminar on what they do in their homes and an incredible four year old speaking seven languages here (yes, seven!)

It is a true gift to speak more than one language. Although it’s easier overall to learn when we’re little, any one of us can start learning another language at any stage of our lives. It even delays the onset of Alzeimer's later on. Go for it!

Kia ora to the focussed parents and caregivers crafting a bilingual legacy for their children every day.

Mā te wā (until next time),

Liz xx

Next up:

#2. Newborn communication

#3. 6-12 months and language

The Art of Listening

Dr Newbury's research

* New Zealand language stats from here

#7. Word-learning whizz-kids; 24-36 months

July 4, 2017 Liz Donnelly

Toddler language development 24 to 36 months - language series 7

This post in our language series looks at children between two and three years old - our little language 'whizz-kids'!

The ‘toddler’ phase of language development is from 12 months right through to 36 months, so your child might be doing some of what’s being discussed in this post before (or after) they turn two. There can be as much as two year's variation in language acquisition, because factors like individual learning styles and birth order have a big influence (for example firstborns have a definite advantage because they get more adult one-on-one conversations). A child might seem delayed in their language because they don’t say much out loud, but could actually have a deep understanding of the language around them - advanced ‘receptive language’ - while others have advanced ‘expressive language’, meaning they say a lot of words, but they may not comprehend as much. Each child’s journey to language fluency is unique and gradual, moving from knowing what something is, learning what it’s called, then learning to speak about it in a variety of contexts. Clever whizz-kids!

The amazing two year old

The two year old has usually mastered physical feats like standing on tiptoe, standing on one foot while holding onto something, and jumping. Although they are still climbing the mountain towards language fluency, they can now truly engage in conversations. Quickly moving from using mostly one or two word sentences to longer phrases, and progressing from simply labelling things in the environment to more general language, during this year children start making requests (or commands!), questioning (Why?), protesting (No!), saying common greetings, and expressing how they feel (“I’m tired”). Gestures are still relied on but now they’re starting to be accompanied more often by words.

Two year olds might be able to say 100-300 words and will likely understand many more, making full use of their growing 'working memory' (our short term high speed memory files). They use simplified versions of words ('nana' instead of 'banana'), switch out the beginning letters ('tar' instead of 'car') and can sometimes seem like they're stuttering - language is landing so fast during the next few years that the brain gets ahead of the mouth sometimes (especially when the child is tired or excited).

It’s interesting to note that there are differences depending on what language is being acquired – children learning Mandarin have an average expressive vocabulary of 550 words by around two!*

Before this stage, the child’s language was all about the ‘here and now’, using objects and daily routines to make sense of the world. However children now start to have a deeper understanding of language during this year, you can tell because they bring in sentences that have more than one idea in them. The example that expert Robert E. Owens Jr gives in his book Language Development: An Introduction is “Mummy cookies hot?” This sentence means “can I have a cookie Mum?” and “are the cookies hot Mum?” Phrases like this show the child has an ability to plan and execute a multiple step process towards a goal (i.e. to get the biscuit!)

As discussed in our first post in this series, learning language uses three areas of the brain. The child is actively involved, constantly listening to the language in the home to understand the words and work out the correct way to use them. Children scan for the endings of words before the beginnings. They learn that various sounds that might sound similar are actually different (like ‘t’ and ‘d’ on the ends of words). They look for patterns like this and now they also understand that new information can be found outside of the actual words a person is saying, so they closely follow these cues too (for example volume, pitch and intonation).

Learning language actually involves taking a lot of risks in trying new words (and making a lot of mistakes) so it is important to praise children for their efforts, not their results. They need lots of free play time too to process everything they’re learning (after all, ‘play is child’s work’). Children are actively trying to connect all the dots and it can be frustrating for them at times. Although they can ask for help when they need it, this is a notorious period for tantrums that occur out of sheer frustration (let’s take an understanding parent-to-parent collective sigh at this point. And breathe…)

Child Directed Speech

Without really being aware of it, caregivers move from the ‘Infant Directed Speech’ techniques discussed in the baby language posts to a subtly different style, one that quietly and consistently extends the child’s knowledge. An adult might say half the sentence and pause so the child can finish it (this builds vocabulary), or repeat what was said - especially helpful when the child has the words in the wrong order because the adult can correct this. They also repeat what the child has said in order to make sure that they understand; this is ‘active listening’. The adults still exaggerate their pitch and tones, and interestingly, use very short sentences, even shorter than when the child was a baby, which works well for the toddler. The adult is constantly taking cues from the child and will simplify the language even further if they’re not understood. Even kids as young as four will simplify their language for younger children.

Language Learning Strategies

In this later toddler phase, children are using strategies to help their learning, like putting words into categories ('things I eat'), and memorizing groups of words as if they're one ('seeyabye'). Children are also imitating some of what they hear and constantly monitoring all responses they get from the adults around them to work out if they said something the right way.

During this year children are learning many words and they might know 900 by the time they are three! Once they turn three they enter the ‘preschool’ phase of language, and we look into this stage in weeks to come. As a caregiver, you can do so much to help your child with their language, and its helpful to have a basic understanding of how our language develops in the early years. If you are worried about your child’s language development please do take them to see your local health provider.