3 Ways to Get Your Toddler to Understand and Use Verbs
There is a link between verb knowledge and language development. Verb knowledge is a better indicator of linguistic skills than noun knowledge. Children who are late talkers or have an increased risk of Developmental Language Disorder tend to acquire verbs at a slower rate than typically developing children. Even so though, for several reasons, verb acquisition appears to be more challenging for all children than noun acquisition. Verbs are more fleeting in nature than nouns, the mental representation of verbs is not well understood and children may not yet have “adultlike” representations of verbs due to the complex nature of verb component meaning (Source: Horvath & Arunachalam: Contexts for Verb Learning).. This is something that I’m still trying to understand and more research is needed in our field.
For our purposes, it is important to realize that verbs are especially important to target because every sentence requires a verb. Verbs are stepping-stones to forming complete sentences. Research by Hadley, McKenna, and Rispoli (2018), suggests that a greater diversity in verbs translates into improved grammatical development in later years. Verbs also provide toddlers with expression, allowing them to verbalize their wants and frustration. Rather than crying because your toddler is hungry, he or she can say, “eat” to request that she wants to eat. Or, if he or she is thirsty they can say, “drink” to request a drink.
In summary, these are 3 reasons WHY you should encourage your toddler to use verbs:
1. They are harder to acquire than nouns
2. They are the stepping-stones to forming complete sentences and developing grammar
3. They can help young children better express themselves
How can you encourage your child to understand and use verbs?
Three tips in promoting verb knowledge are:
1. Avoid telegraphic speech,
2. Consider the processing demands of the child, and
3. Provide multiple examples
Telegraphic speech is condensed speech in which only the most central words, carrying the most information, are spoken. Typically, only nouns and verbs are included in telegraphic speech.
An example sentence is: “Mommy eat.” “Baby run.”
The problem with using telegraphic speech is that it removes the cues that help children to classify words in their correct category, and it removes cues for word meaning, such as verb endings.
The second tip involves the consideration of the processing demands of the child. If your child’s processing skills appear to be slower, it may be helpful to introduce content nouns before novel verbs. This helps your child notice the difference between the two. For example, when introducing a new verb to a 2 year old - instead of saying, "She is catching the ball" say, "The girl is catching the ball." Some research has shown that content nouns provide more information to the child, increasing their understanding. Interestingly, toddlers younger than 2 years old needed even more support to understand! These young toddlers needed the adult to REPEAT the content noun BEFORE saying the new verb! For example, say, "Look at the girl?" See the girl? The girl is catching the ball!"
Finally, it’s important to provide multiple examples to enforce language skills, providing children with variability and a comprehensive understanding. My post on repetition provides more helpful information on how to give multiple examples.
To summarize, when in doubt don't use telegraphic speech, use content nouns with the appropriate support necessary AND provided many examples!
Not too sure where to begin? Check out my book, My Toddler’s First Words! I write more about the importance of verbs and give step-by-step instructions to help you jumpstart your toddler’s language- see pages 14, 15, 22, and 28 - 30. Part 2 in my book helps you to analyze and consider your toddler's communication needs and abilities so you can appropriately target verbs! For play routines to stimulate early language skills AND learn how to do play routines, please see My Toddler Talks! *Amazon Affiliate links included for your convenience.
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Toddler Communication: It’s More Than Just Nouns