Listening and Talking Skills

Listening underpins all language development and social interaction.  Children need appropriate opportunities and experiences to ensure that they develop their listening skills securely.  Good listening skills enable children to learn, play and develop friendships.

Supporting Listening Skills

When children find it hard to listen it can effect their ability to learn effectively and often this can be because they have not had the early life experiences that allow them to develop robustly, but with the right support they can learn this skill.  

Sally Neum ( Teaching Children to Listen:2019) tells us that we need to develop and effective approach.  In her book she tells us that it is often not that children can't listen but that they don't understand what good listening is.  She has devised an approach that enables children to, 

• learn the different behaviours then need to become good listeners

• understand how good listening can help them

• motivate them to show this behaviour independently

She goes on to tell us that listening is not just one skill but individual skills we learn and then bundle together in order to listen effectively.  The four she highlights are,

• looking at the person who is talking

• staying quiet

• sitting still

• listening to ALL the words

Sometimes children only have some of these skills and need to learn the ones that are missing, our observations should help us pinpoint and develop these for the individual child.

Discriminating Sounds

In our early years settings it is important that we provide opportunities to help children develop this essential skill.  These are not phonetic sounds but the discrimination of sounds in the environment which is vital to the development of speech sounds needed for phonological awareness.  The discrimination of sounds can be supported and developed through listening games where children have to pick out foreground sound against background noise, for example Musical Statues, Traffic Lights etc

Phonological Awareness - awareness of sounds in language, the  developmental stage before phonemic awareness

Phonemic Awareness - the ability to discriminate individual speech sounds (focuses only on the sounds of a word) 

Phonics  - focuses on the relationship of sounds and letters 

It is very difficult for children to develop their phonics skills if they don't have a good foundation in phonological and phonemic awareness.

“Reading and writing float on a sea of talk”

We are hardwired to communicate from birth, but all need help to learn to talk as communication doesn’t just develop on its own. Making sure that children’s communication skills are properly supported to develop is fundamental.

Importance of Talk

Research shows that good speech and language skills have a huge impact on educational attainment, and when thinking about  the importance of supporting communication in the early years some of these  findings are worth a thought:

● Vocabulary at age five is a very strong predictor of the qualifications achieved at school leaving age and beyond (Feinstein and Duckworth, 2006).

● Children whose language difficulties were resolved by five-and-a-half are more likely to go on to develop good reading and spelling skills (Conti-Ramsden, 2009).

● Early speech, language and communication difficulties are a very significant predictor of later literacy difficulties (Snowling et al 2006).

Studies have also shown that children from disadvantaged backgrounds can have additional issues to overcome with  the right support and encouragement the are able to go on to develop the good communication skills.

Supporting Speech

Learning to talk relies on several underlying skills and practitioners can support these from birth. In fact, the support provided for young babies is just as important as activities with toddlers and preschool children when it comes to developing speech.

The following ideas are a great ways to ensure that we are giving the the best support to enable the children in our care become the best communicators they can be:

● Look at the child you’re working with. Show them that you’re switched on and ready to listen. It also encourages them to look at you. This is easier to do if your eyes are at the same height, so get down to their level or bring them up to yours.

● Talk in short sentences. This helps children understand what you’re saying and also gives them a chance to copy the kind of sentence you’re using.

● Understanding words is a skill that’s acquired slowly. Build on what each child says: when they say one word, you say two. (“Bus”, “Red bus”.)

● Children need time to process language, so give them a chance to respond. Resist the temptation to jump in too quickly.

● Children learn to modify the sounds they use by listening to adults, but they can’t necessarily change the way they say things straight away. If a child attempts a word, say it back to them. For example, if they say “Dod”, you say, “Yes, dog” ). Don’t make them say it back to you afterwards; they’ll do this when they’re ready.

● Children’s speech takes several years to mature. They learn through playing, so encourage them to play with sounds, by making animal noises and so on. Nearer school age, playing can involve rhyming games or making up words.

Getting the most from children’s communication isn’t only about being actively involved with an individual child. It’s also about making sure the environment supports communication development too. This means making sure your setting is geared up to encourage good communication skills.

Providing a Setting to Support Communication Development

● Staff should have an understanding about how communication skills develop and how to support them; provide or source appropriate  training and support, encourage role modelling from experienced practitioners.

● enables children to learn through means other than language, for example, using visual timetables, gesture or communication systems such as Makaton;

● has set routines for the sessions so that children know what’s going on;

● has a quiet area with few distractions where children can go to learn to listen to what is being said to them.

Through a combination of strategies used by staff (such as repeating and reinforcing new vocabulary, supporting songs with actions and objects), appropriate language styles (for example, using simple, repetitive language during everyday activities) and suitable approaches (things like modelling activities, using questions that invite conversation), settings can make sure that they support communication development in all children.