Conversational Children

I was searching Google about children developing language and came across an article that made me think back to what we have been covering in class. If you are interested in reading it yourself, here is the link: http://www.childrensdisabilities.info/speech/conversations.html.

It basically says how you should talk to children as much as you possibly can, even if it seems just like a pointless conversation to you. As long as the child is engaging in an actual conversation, it is a good thing. The article says to talk about things that the child is interested in and introduce new words to them if possible. This reminds me of the Pragmatic-Interactionist Model because one of the aspects of the model is that people talk in order to communicate. By communication with a child, you will know more about their interests and will be more able to have more conversations with them.

This article also says that if your child participates in conversations as much as possible, that the child will be better at paying attention, learn more, have more opportunities to use what they know to learn even more, and will be able to build stronger relationships with others.

Another thing this article talks about that made me think back to class is the last section of it. It is titled "Follow rules of social conversations." In this section it says some social rules in having conversations are to communicate for a response, wait in silence for the person to say something back, and respond to what that person has to say. It goes on to say what you should not do conversations such as interrupting, ignoring the person, rambling, and don't change the topic in the middle of another conversation. It also says to be sure and have the other person clarify what they mean if you do not understand what they said.

That whole last paragraph of the article sounds just like the things we learned in class about pragmatics.

-Amelia (Millie) Combs