Principle #2

Children learn language best through experience, play, and organic interactions.

Definition: Infants, toddlers, and young children learn language by interacting with others and observing others interacting. They need play for metacognitive development and emotional self-regulation5 and experiences to learn language in real-life contexts. They need opportunities for natural conversational turn taking or “serve and return” experiences.

This principle looks like:

  • Playing with the child’s preferred toy(s) and utilizing natural language

  • Field trips

  • Experiential play

  • Having a natural conversational exchange with a young child

  • Positive “serve and return” interactions6 (i.e. when they coo or babble, you respond)

  • Ensuring that the Deaf child has access to incidental learning (i.e. the ambient language around them)

This principle doesn't look like:

  • Teaching discrete skills in a specific order

  • Repeatedly telling a Deaf child to "say this word”2

  • One-way language interactions that do not allow the Deaf child to respond naturally

  • Exchanges where the Deaf child says what they think you want to hear

  • Regulating or controlling predetermined communication

  • Assuming a Deaf child with hearing devices can hear the ambient spoken language

Key concepts:

  • Language is learned best through natural interactions between people

  • Children learn language through experience and play

References

1. Comparison between asset and deficit based approaches. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.memphis.edu/ess/module4/page3.php

2. Gibbons, S.M. & Szarkowski, A. (2019) One tool in the toolkit is not enough: Making the case for using multisensory approaches in aural habilitation of children with reduced hearing. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 4, 345-355.

3. Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Moreland, D.J., Napoli, D.J., Osterling, W., Padden, C., & Rathmann, C. (2010). Infants and children with hearing loss need early language access. Journal of Clinical Ethics 21(2), 143-154.

4. Soma, C. (2016). Strength-based versus deficit-based thinking. Retrieved from https://starr.org/strength-based-versus-deficit-based-thinking/

5. Whitebread, D., Basilio, M., Kuvalja, M., & Verma, M. (2012). The importance of play: A report on the value of children’s play with a series of policy recommendations. University of Cambridge.

6. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. (2007). The Science of Early Childhood Development (InBrief). Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu