Learn words in sentences

I stumbled upon this video on one of the blogs that I am following.





First of all, it is great that there are specialists out there that can provide speech therapy for bilinguals.

Second, I like how the therapist says that word connections in the brain are stronger when you talk about the word, rather than just announcing it. I think this also applies to early language acquisition. Talking about the object: "Look at the elephant over there. What a big elephant! It has big ears and an interesting tail. Look it is going to its friend - the other elephant!", rather than just pointing and saying:"E-LE-PHANT!" will make the connection in the brain stronger.

This also helps the child to clarify the potential confusion: in the beginning, children assign multiple meanings to the same word, because they don't know what exactly is described - an action, an object, or a characteristic of an object (Raising a bilingual child by Barbara Zurer Pearson, PhD). This reminds of my Russian nephew who invited his grandma to sit down by saying: "Баба! Попа!" ("Grandma! Butt!") Eventually, when presented with more examples of the use of a particular word, children are able to identify whether it describes an object or an action or an attribute.

In other words, narrating an object is better than just naming it, because it helps the child to put together the form and the meaning faster.