Small Talk

Sara Nolan reports on the importance of baby talk.

Talk To Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy Trust, is tackling children's poor communication skills by encouraging all parents and carers to talk more to babies aged 0-3 years. Reports and surveys confirm concern from headteachers, Ofsted and early years professionals that too many children have poor language competence at entry to nursery.

As part of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's (QCA) English 21 conversations, Talk To Your Baby put forward a suggestion that the study of language acquisition should be introduced into the key stage 4 English curriculum so that all secondary students have an understanding of how babies learn to talk and why this matters.

In order to break the cycle of poor communication skills, the key messages need to be presented to teenagers before they become parents. At the top end of education we know there is a good take-up of the Spoken English Studies topic at A level English Language. A pilot is currently underway with Edexcel, which introduces the topic to 15-year-olds.

Benefits for students would include an understanding that parents have a vital role to play in talking to their baby, and why it matters. Not all new parents know their role in this. This will also help them in their roles as siblings, babysitters and individuals in contact with small children. In addition, they will have a deeper understanding of the structure and different functions of language, through knowledge of early language development.

Talk To Your Baby has created a School Resource Kit for teachers of students at key stage 4. It has been designed to help young people understand the importance of early years communication. It combines practical activities with fact sheets. The pack contains:

• A quiz and fact sheet, which act as a fun introduction to the benefits of talking to babies.
• The Baby's First Word toolkit, which is an initiative to encourage the collection of babies' first and second words and the stories behind them in order to stimulate thought and discussion on the subject of communication.
• A babysitting activities sheet to put the theory into a practical perspective.

The resources are flexible and can be adapted and used in the way that best suits teaching styles and students' learning styles and lifestyles. The material can be downloaded from the Talk To Your Baby website, at www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk, and freely photocopied and distributed. The School Resource Kit was launched in November 2005, and within the first three months there were 7,388 downloads. It was also distributed to everyone involved in the Edexcel pilot.

The Talk To Your Baby website has a lot of information that teachers can use if they wish to add to the School Resource Kit and extend the breadth of their teaching of language development and acquisition. The site's 'issues' section provides information on a wide range of related-topics that could be used for debate, discussion and research.

In 2004 Talk To Your Baby organised a topical conference exploring whether television can contribute to children's language development. There is a conference report on the website, as well as a research report and news updates that follow the lively discussions that continue to take place among early years professionals, academics and those involved in television production. Students would find this an interesting and stimulating area to research.

Another potential topic for classroom debate is the use of pusher-facing buggies to encourage eye contact and stimulation with children. During 2005 and 2006 Talk To Your Baby has been campaigning widely on this issue, to try and encourage buggy manufacturers to produce affordable pusher-facing buggies that would be accessible to all parents and carers. The views of parents, professionals and the buggy manufacturers can be found on the Talk To Your Baby website, along with the press coverage that this issue has received.

These are just two examples of the many areas that could be expanded on, in order to get students involved and interested in a lively debate on early language acquisition. Talk To Your Baby's Discussion Paper (also downloadable from the website) provides a useful overview of some of the key topics identified by early years professionals, parents and interested parties. Talk To Your Baby welcomes feedback and comments from teachers and students on both the School Resource Kit and the results of discussions that take place on early years language development.

(Ink Pellet, May 2006)