Danish scientists have found that there is no more effective method for developing the speech of a 3-5 year old child than discussing with him the events of the past day. Euro-pulse.ru reports this.
Researchers from Denmark and the United States recorded conversations between parents and children in a variety of situations: reading picture books, playing with LEGOs, and discussing the events of the day. Immediately after the experiment, a test was administered to assess the child's vocabulary.
It turned out that while talking about past events, parents' speech was grammatically more complex than during play or reading. This helps the child become more and more familiar with common sentences.
In terms of vocabulary development, talking about events was as effective as reading. In both cases, parents more often asked questions “what?”, “who?”, “where?”, encouraging the child to remember what happened, as well as “why?” and “how?”, which develop thinking.
The study's authors argue that lively discussion of events is a much more natural and universal type of interaction than reading or playing with objects. This explains its high effectiveness in speech development at an early age.
