1. Review following videos.
Sam and Ren at age 10 months:
1) The Early Days of the Boys Laughing and Giggling :Talking twin babies-Where it began (Links to an external site.)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWsrsKnGulA&feature=relmfu
Sam and Ren as toddlers:
2) Talking twin babies – Part 1 (Links to an external site.) of the Conversation
3) Talking twin babies – Part 2 (Links to an external site.) of the Conversation
4) 20 months old toddler talking (Links to an external site.)
2. After watching the first three videos, discuss with your group how Sam and Ren use tools beyond intelligible speech to communicate “intentionally” with each other. Can you find examples of prosody, volume adjustment, gesture, emotion deciphering, turn-taking, reciprocity (i.e., speaker and listener switch roles to initiate and to respond to the initiations of others), shared reference (i.e., joint attention to objects, activities), eye contact and how they are used to communicate intentionality?
The last video shows how a young toddler imitates his mother’s speech to learn how to speak new words (i.e., phonology) as well as the meaning of some words (i.e., “semantics”; note the little boy’s expression when he says “garbage truck”… how do you know that this little boy knows what a garbage truck means?). How did the mother use prosody, volume adjustment, emotion deciphering, turn taking and/or reciprocity, shared reference to support her son’s learning of new words?
Discuss some activities that a parent might do with their child to support language acquisition during the toddler years.
Discuss some activities that an early learning and care professional might do to informally assess how a child is communicating and using language in a daycare setting.
Link your ideas to the content of the two articles of the text that you were asked to read this week.