Practicing listening makes perfect listeners
Practicing listening makes perfect listeners
- Regularly read stories to your child
- After reading the story, for example a story on a birthday party, ask your child questions related to:
- Main topic e.g. "Why was the girl excited?"
- Fine details e.g. "How many balloons were there?" or "What was the color of the girl's dress?"
- Sequence of events e.g. "What happened after the girl got dressed?" or "What had the girl been doing all day long before her friends arrived?"
- Inference (indirectly stated information) e.g. if in the story, it is mentioned that, "There were eight candles on the girl's birthday cake", you can then ask the child, "How old is the girl?"
- Prediction e.g. "What do you think the girl will do with her birthday present?" Do encourage and accept any logical prediction from your child.
- Include a variety of question words; who, what, why, when, where, how, whose, to whom, with whom, etc. in your questions.
- Initially, use a lot of prompts, demos, pictures, gestures and modeling to help your child. Then, gradually fade your prompts.
- Read a new story every day or every other day to make sure that your child can understand novel information and is not merely dependant on what he/she has previously studied and memorized.
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