Friday, July 22, 2005
Toddler's Vocabulary LessonFour months after Little Skywalker was born, he has began to show signs of eagerness to talk to us (probably wanted to shout at us for non-stop harassing him during his sleep time). Due to my continuous "influential coercion", he managed to burp out his first word, and yes, it was "pa pa" or rather like "puh pah". Hence, I beat J to getting him to call me first!
In order to teach a toddler on how to convey their thoughts, we need to make them feel the urge of communicating as well as the benefits of doing so. Is like training sea lion to jump through fire-lit hoops, you've got to give them some kinda candies afterwards :P In my case, I would carry him up and down, or take him for a walk after he pronounce my name (or rather his way of calling me) properly.
Another point to bear in mind is that you should not confuse the young toddler on various words that mean different things and yet they are quite similar in pronunciation. Words like "mum mum" (food) and "ma ma" should never be taught together. That's why J failed to convince Little Skywalker to call her first in her race with me. At least I was not stupid enough to teach him "pah pah" (scared in mandarin) together with my title.
Toddlers will only managed to pick up single syllable words like "ball", "fan", "car", "key", "bird", "fish" etc. at first if you pronounce it in multiple times in front of them ("ball x2", "fan x2", "car x2"... you'd get what I mean). And believe me, sooner or later, this kind of speaking will get to you, and you will start talking strangely in front of your colleagues and friends :P
Toddlers also remember better in terms of things that they see everyday. So, if you want them to pronounce a certain words, please come ready with the necessary props or better yet, the actual thing.
So far, our Little Skywalker are getting much better in terms speaking and pointing to stuff that he wants. When he is lazy to speak but he wants something badly, he will just point to it and keep nodding his head repeatedly until his request is being fulfilled. He is even smart enough to finish a word when we uttered the first syllable, like A-pple. Actually our intention was to get him finish a sentence like "A for Apple, B for Ball", but we will take it for now...
If you master the whole art of teaching and have all the necessary resources, who knows, you might trick them to say "Hippopotamus" within the first 15 months!
On a side note: some barbaric teacher (if they still deserve the title) uses two students as human shield when he rides his motorcycle home from school (with one seated in front and one at the back) in order to protech himself from bandits and terrorist which is on the uprise in Southern Thailand. I tell you this, if he uses our son as a shield, he can stop worrying about attacks from bandits or terrorist, because I will be the first one who will personally put a bullet in his/her head.
Jotted down by Egghead :: at around 7/22/2005 08:36:00 AM :: and invited 5 Blah(s):
5 Blah(s) by:
Mumsgather,
,
,
Jason Lioh,
sqkiki,
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