Magda: Can I help you?

Me: Coffee please

Magda: What type?

Me: Let me think…

Magda: Cappuccino? Latte? Americano?

Me: Cappuccino.

Magda: Regular or large?

Me: Regular

Magda: To drink in or to take away?

Me: To drink in.

I thought I had finished, but the questioning went on until it was established that I would like chocolate on my cappuccino and yes, I would like something to eat. After some thought I pointed at a cake and said, “One of those.’ At which point Magda told me that ‘one of those’ was, in fact, a ‘double chocolate chip muffin’… and did I have a loyalty card to be stamped?

I felt very sorry for Magda, imagining that she would have to go through these types of exchanges pretty much all day long. So the next day I prepared my lines as I was waiting in the queue, then placed my order and received my order in double quick time (though I forgot to tell her that it was’ to drink in’ and to have my loyalty card ready to be stamped). Feeling very pleased with myself, I sat down and watched how everyone else communicated what they wanted.

There seem to be two types of customer. Those in a hurry and ordering ‘to go’ know exactly what they want and how to ask for it, so that the Barrista will have no doubt about what to do. They have their loyalty card ready to be stamped and even have the exact amount of money ready. Those ‘drinking in’ and not in a rush usually hold up the queue by being unsure about what they want, and take their time to choose their food. Often they point vaguely in the direction of a pastry, forcing poor Magda to tell them what their choice is called.

By day three I was a seasoned customer. Thanks to Magda, I had learned a new vocabulary, and how to use it to get what I needed. (OK, so I don’t need coffee and muffins, but they are nice.) And that is exactly how young children develop their vocabulary: by adults gently guiding them to use more exact language to get what they want. Here’s an example of the ‘Talk4Meaning coffee shop language enrichment technique’:

Benjie is 18 months old and wants his Dad to pick him up, so he holds his arms up and says ‘Uh! Uh!’ in a pleading kind of way. Dad has a choice: e can either just pick his son up, or he can have a simple conversation like this:

Dad: You want me to pick you up? (Pause for Benjie to respond).

Benjie: Pi ee uh

Dad: That’s right. Pick me up! (Dad picks Benjie up. Hug and kiss are optional, but usually a very good idea). Here we go, Daddy has picked you up. Where shall we go?

Benjie: Oh oh.

Dad: You’d like to go to the coffee shop with Daddy?

Benjie: Toh ee op.

Dad: Would you like a regular or large chococcino? To drink in or take away? Anything to eat? Have you got a loyalty card?

(That last line was a joke…)

Flat white skinny latte courtesy of Ground Espresso Bar, Ballymoney, County Antrim.

Let’s Get Talking! Exciting ways to help children with speech and language difficulties by Michael Jones & Jo Belsten is available from www.lawrenceeducational.co.uk

My Granny once gave me three pieces of useful advice: always carry a handkerchief, wear clean pants every day in case you fall down in the street and end up in hospital, and never trust a man who changes his name. Granny was ‘Old School’, and this post is about two of those nuggets.

Cary Grant, AKA Archie Leach, and star of such classics as North By Northwest, and To Catch a Thief, once confided in an interview that he preferred to wear women’s silk knickers. The reason he gave was that when he was staying in hotels knickers, or panties, as they are known stateside, were easier to wash in the sink and dried quickly: ready to wear the next day. You couldn’t make it up. But then Cary knew what he was doing. Or at least he thought he did, because after that revelation he appeared in Bringing Up Baby wearing Katherine Hepburn’s frilly dressing gown, and in a truly bizarre scene in Charade he took a shower dressed in his suit (and it wasn’t his birthday suit either). One Hollywood wag quipped, ‘These days Cary doesn’t need to act: he just plays himself.’

Where is this going? Well it’s all about how we can increase children’s vocabulary. When I was leading the Every Child a Talker (ECaT) project, I was convinced that there was a huge need to improve children’s vocabulary. Many children across the UK were starting school with limited language skills, and their limited vocabulary in particular was a key factor linked to later educational failure. So I was on a mission to increase all children’s ‘Word Power’.

The scope of the problem was brought home to me when I was sharing a funny story called How Do I Put It On? It’s a simple tale of a teddy bear who doesn’t know how to get dressed. I would start off with a small group of children, two almost life-size boy and girl puppets and a pile of children’s clothes. We would sort the clothes into what the children thought was right for boys and girls to wear, and take turns to dress the puppets. The children, aged three and a half, had no problem in deciding in what order the puppets should put their clothes on, and they could see the funny side of me trying to put the boy’s socks on after he had put on his boots. But there was outrage when I suggested that the boy puppet put on a pair of knickers. Outrage from the girls, that is-the boys didn’t bat an eyelid. Were their parents from the Cary Grant school of getting dressed, or was there something else going on?

When I discussed this with my colleagues I realised that this was an indicator of the children’s lack of experience and vocabulary. The little boys just didn’t know that there were such things as knickers, and ‘pants’ was the word they used to describe all underwear. Well that is hardly surprising, you might say. But this was the tip of a much bigger iceberg of limited vocabulary development. Many children called all clothes covering their top halves a ‘top’: including jumpers, cardigans, fleeces and hoody tops. A little bit of earwigging revealed that many parents used the word ‘top’, as in, ‘Where’s your top? /Put your top on’ etc. Polo shirts, T-Shirts, and long-sleeved shirts were all referred to as ’shirts’. I also noticed that many of the staff’s use of vocabulary was similarly inexact.

I’m not bashing parents or practitioners here: we all know that when we are in a hurry we talk as simply as we can. No teacher preparing a group of children to go outside for playtime is going to say, “Right children, put on your coats, jackets, duffel coats, bomber jackets, boots, trainers, sandals, pumps, hats, balaclavas, berets etc. etc.” However it seems to me that if we want to increase children’s vocabulary, all we have to do is to talk accurately to them during everyday activities. So once I have said to the whole group, “Everybody put your coats on,” I will then talk to individual children about what they are wearing: “That’s a nice jacket/ Shall I help you fasten the toggles on your duffel coat? / Those are very smart trainers/ I like your T-shirt/ Have you noticed my new polo shirt?” etc. etc. Children sometimes argue with me; e.g. one little boy told me, “They are not toggles. My Mum calls them buttons.” To which I replied, “Sometimes things have different names. Mummy calls them buttons, and I call them toggles.”

Polo shirt or T-shirt? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

This is often all that is needed to give all children’s vocabulary a real boost. Some settings have taken things a stage further: by putting up displays to remind children and adults that every object has a name, and some have two or even three. One nursery had a display on the wall in the home corner, with photos of key objects that children regularly play with, and captions beneath them; e.g. saucepan/frying pan, cup/mug, plate/saucer, washing up bowl and washing up brush/scourer. Some items are given different names in families; e.g. tea towel/drying up cloth. This can be discussed with the children, so they can understand each other and learn about local variations. It was only recently, for example, that I learned that what I call spring onions are referred to as scallions in Northern Ireland, and what to me is a swede is known as a turnip in Scotland. In the USA trousers are called pants. This is all grist to the mill (whatever that means) for children’s vocabulary development.

One of my favourite displays was on the front of the children’s spare clothes cupboard in a neighbourhood nursery. Real items of children’s clothing had been stapled on the doors, with captions underneath, so everyone could talk accurately about what they needed: tights or knickers? Briefs or boxer shorts? T-Shirt or polo shirt?

This did make me wonder whether Cary Grant would have benefited from attending a setting that had been involved in the ECaT project. Occasionally I wonder whether Reg Dwight and Harry Webb would have become such famous singers if they hadn’t changed their names…

This post was written in a hotel room. In case you are wondering, I’m going to the launderette tomorrow.

How Do I Put It On? Is written by Shigeo Watanabe.

Let’s Get Talking! Exciting ways to help children with speech and language difficulties by Michael Jones & Jo Belsten is available from www.lawrenceeducational.co.uk

I had never heard of Audrey Hepburn before, but her name (and face) stuck in my mind instantly and forever. When I was 21 I had the same experience with Nastassja Kinski. That was around the time I was studying to be a Speech and Language Therapist. One of our first lectures was led by Professor Soandso from Suchandsuch University. His opening line was “Of course you all realise that a child has to hear a word 500 times before he can start using it.”

We were very impressed, but I remember thinking, “that’s a huge amount of talking I’ve got to do to help children with language learning needs.” So impressed was I with this idea, that I instantly took it to heart, and for a few years after I qualified lived by the idea that the more you tell children the name of things, the quicker they will learn them. (It was only later that I began to listen and respond more, and talk less, but that’s another story.)

Soon after I qualified I gave a talk to a parents’ group at a local playgroup, on an estate only a stone’s throw from the walls of a well-known prison in North London. That’s where I met little Stacey’s gran, Betty. Betty was described as a ‘well known character on the estate’. This was my first attempt at public speaking, so I had my first line ready: “Of course you all realise that a child has to hear a word 500 times before he can start using it.”

“What a load of **** !” interjected Betty. We hadn’t covered how to deal with swearing grannies in our public speaking workshops, so I was a bit thrown by Betty’s remark. The playgroup staff’s sniggering didn’t help either. Then I remembered how we were taught to deal with difficult questions: just ask the questioners to tell you what they think.

“What do you think then?”

“I’ll tell you what I ****ing well think!”

“Go on,” I said, encouragingly.

“I’ll ****ing go on! The other day I was pushing Stacey’s little brother Ronnie in his buggy through the market. I heard this geezer shout to his dog,” Come hear you stupid ****er!!” Well Ronnie only heard that swear word once and he hasn’t stopped using it since!”

I think for the rest of my talk I stressed the importance of playing with your children, or some such safe subject. But Betty had a point: you only have to hear some words once, and they instantly stick in your mind. For me it was ‘Audrey Hepburn’. Other words just seem to be instantly forgettable. Some words are exciting because of the emotion behind them, the impact they have on other people and the response you get when you say them: e.g. a little child swearing!

In those days we wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask an esteemed visiting lecturer to quote the research evidence to back up his ‘500 times per new word’ claim. But had Betty been training to be a Speech and Language Therapist, the professor would have told her that children up to about 15 months do need to hear words a lot of times in context before they start using them: as part of everyday life, in songs and when sharing books. It seems that they need to have between 50 and 75 words that they know and use really well. Then they reach a ‘word spurt’, where they only need to hear certain words a few times before they start to use them.

However these words have to be interesting and related to people they meet, activities they are involved in and objects that they can handle. These include people’s names, exciting objects (food, toys, clothes etc.) or things that really take their fancy: aeroplanes, cars, animals, washing machines, phones, the moon, trees, birds… anything! Most importantly, they need to hear these words as part of conversations, where adults have time to listen to them, and respond to their efforts to name everything that is going on around them. This also applies to older children with additional language learning needs, who need more time and encouragement to be involved in these conversations.

So if a child is in a day care setting, she will need as many adults around her as possible: who have time to engage her in chat; e.g. sharing a book or responding to what she is saying and giving her more words to get excited about.

This is a very powerful reason for recommending that the number of adults needed for any given group of children should be increased wherever possible, and certainly not reduced!