Language and Literacy

Sharing book-time with your child is a great way to support their language and literacy development. It can deepen bonds and can blossom into a love of books. Books can bring new worlds to your child!

But My Child Doesn’t Look At Books

For new book learners, show them what to do with a book and help them to enjoy the experience. Try the following.

• Give predictability by repeating what you do:
  • turn each page;
  • lift a flap on each page;
  • or touch a furry/bumpy/smooth insert on each page.
• Make it fun by saying, singing or doing something brief and similar each time:
  • “Let’s see what’s next! It’s a ____!”;
  • “Something’s hiding. Here it is!”;
  • “Old McDonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o. And on his farm he had a ______ e-i-e-i-o.”;
  • “The horse in the barn says ‘moo, moo, moo’. The duck in the barn says, ‘quack, quack, quack'”;
  • “It’s so soft!” “It’s so bumpy! “It’s so smooth!.
• Repeat interesting voice intonations, facial expressions and body movement to add anticipation and excitement.

Steps to Success

• Start with books your child likes. Interesting pictures create great material for conversations.
• You don’t have to read the text in the book. You can talk about pictures instead. Singing familiar lines from songs can provide great opportunities for learning, especially for gestalt language learners.
• Emphasize important words and new vocabulary.
• Show interest in what your child does or says. Sometimes repeat back what they say to let them know you hear them and are following along: “Ya, it’s a giant spider!”
• Follow you child’s interests by building on what they do or say: “Ya, it’s a giant spider! Look at its hairy legs!”
• Take turns with your child by responding briefly right after your child does or says something. Then wait for them to take a turn.
• Keep your language brief. Too much language can make it difficult for your child to understand and maintain interest.
• Model actions and language by doing or saying examples of what your child appears to be ready to do, according to their language learning stage.
• Help your child to have fun, and reduce any pressure to imitate what you model.
• If you think a particular book might be too long for their attention span, a book with less pages might be good to start. (You can stick pages together or skip pages to get through the book faster if needed. However, notice whether skipping pages is reducing the fun factor for your child.)

Watch Out For “Testing Questions”!

“What colour is that?” “What is that called?” These kinds of “testing questions” often create anxiety for children. They reduce opportunities for development of spontaneous engagement and full language learning. If you know the answer to a question, it is usually best to comment instead: “Look, it’s a red truck!” “That’s alligator is big!” A good guideline is to save questions for when:

• you don’t know the answer;
• asking for your child’s preference, feelings or opinions;
• encouraging your child to predict what might happen next;
• asking about what caused a problem, how to prevent a problem or how to solve a problem;
• asking about what your child thinks a character might be feeling or thinking, or how a character feels about a situation and why.

Have Fun!

When your child is enjoying book-time with you, they will want to keep going. That creates great memories and many opportunities for learning!

It’s important to offer the right kinds of support at each stage of gestalt language learning. Here is more information on what to expect at each stage and how to offer appropriate support for the stage.

Stage 1–Whole Gestalts and Echolalia: At this stage, learners repeat whole gestalts exactly as they heard it. Gestalts are repetitions of whole phrases, sentences or longer. They might have been just heard, or heard days ago. This repetition is called echolalia. Sometimes learners will repeat gestalts to soothe or entertain themselves. However, repetitions are often attempts to communicate by taking a turn in conversation or by conveying a specific message (even if the listener does not understand). For example, Jayden might have heard the expression, “The buck stops here!”, in an angry intonation, when his parent was talking to his sibling. When Jayden’s parent later seems to be angry at him, he might say, “The buck stops here!” to communicate, “Oh no, you/I did something wrong!” At this stage, learners need to hear more examples of gestalt phrases and sentences to provide enough material for them to begin to mitigate (recombine) parts.

Stage 2–Mitigation of Gestalts: Gestalt language learners begin to understand the meaning of smaller parts of their gestalts. They begin to break down and recombine these smaller parts with parts from other expressions they know. For example, Jayden learned the meaning of “the kid” from often hearing, “there goes the kid” and “the kid ate the pie”, when watching his favourite cartoon. He also learned the meaning of “stop/s here”, independent of “The buck stops here”. When an anxious, but not angry, parent holds Jayden back from crossing at a red light, Jayden says, “The kid [himself] + stops here”. At this stage, learners need to hear examples of phrases and words combined with parts of gestalts they already know. For example, if a learner says, “Let’s go night-night”, you can begin to model, “Let’s go home”, “Let’s go to the park”, “Let’s go now”.

Stage 3–Isolating Individual Words: Learners now understand the meaning of some single words and they begin to say individual words instead of whole or mitigated gestalts. For example, when Jayden has learned the meaning of “stop,” as a single word, he might say just “stop” when he gets to the red light. Teachers and family members often worry when they hear single words instead of sentences. However, for gestalt learners this is progress. A new understanding of individual words allows learners to begin to combine single words into sentences they have not heard before. For example, Jayden might now say, “Jayden [himself] + stops + now.” At this stage, learners need to hear models of more single words and two-word combinations. Two-word such as adjectives + nouns are a good place to start: “huge dog”; “scary monster”; “red block”, “soft blanket”.

Stage 4-6–Generation of New Sentences by Recombining Single Words: Gestalt language learners continue to combine and recombine individual words to express a greater variety and complexity of sentences they have not heard before. They use many conventional rules of grammar and sentence structure. Now Jayden might say, “Dad, remember to stop at the red light.” It’s important to ensure that the child has a firm grasp of using flexible, spontaneous language before focusing on grammar, articulation and complex language structures. From stages 4 and up, you can begin to focus on modeling the following: asking and answering “wh” questions (“what”, “who”, “why”, “when”, “where” and “how”); conventional grammar; narratives and story-telling; verbal problem-solving; articulation of speech sounds.

For more information on how to supporting a gestalt language processor:

• Consult with a speech-language professional;
• Go to Engaging Potential’s post “How to Support a Gestalt Language Learner”.

Gestalt language processors learn best through natural language acquisition rather than through explicit teaching. Communicate naturally, while keeping the following in mind.

• Follow their lead to encourage spontaneous communication. Give them more of what they are enjoying.
• Notice what the learner is interested in and make a comment about it.
• If you want to ask them a question and you already know the answer, it’s likely a “testing question”. Make a comment instead.
• Acknowledge and repeat what they express to show that you’re interested. Next, add something very brief and then wait to give them a chance to add to the conversation.
• Model useful and interesting phrases and sentences. Beginning with modeling of single words instead of phrases and sentences can make it difficult for the learner to progress.
• Match phrases and sentences you say to the activities and routines you do with together with the learner. This helps them to learn meaning. Common phrases and sentence starters to model include: “Let’s …..”; “Wanna ……?”, “It’s time for ……”.
• Learners often need to hear a phrase or sentence many times before saying it. Place no pressure or expectation for the learner to say what you model.
• Use songs, interesting intonation and expressive emotions to engage gestalt learners.
• Provide language modeling that is appropriate for the stage of gestalt language development your learner is in. Find out more about the stages and what supports to offer in Engaging Potential’s post “Stages of Gestalt Language Learning (and what learners need at each stage)”.
• Talk with a speech-language professional to find out more about how to support a specific learner.

At least 70% of autistic children are gestalt language processors. Many children learn language by first learning single words (ball”). Then they learn to combine two words (“give ball”). Next, they learn to combine three or more words to make sentences (“Give me that ball!”). This type of learning is called analytical language learning. Other children develop language in a less-common way called gestalt language learning. Both styles of learning can lead to similar expressions of language at later stages.

Gestalt learners understand and express bigger chunks of language (such as phrases and sentences) before they understand and express small chunks (such as individual words).   For example, in early stages a learner might say, “Wanna eat some cookies?” to mean “Can I have a snack?” At later stages, the same learner might say just “snack”.

What are some other characteristics of gestalt language learners? They often begin by learning language that they associate with strong emotions such as pleasure, anger, excitement, or sadness. After hearing words in one situation, they might then associate the words with other kinds of situations. For example, a father might sternly say, “Give me that ball!” after his child throws the ball and breaks a window. A few days later, the child knocks over a glass vase and exclaims, “Give me that ball!” The child might understand, “Give me that ball!” as meaning, “You/I broke it!” Initially, it can take detective work to figure out what a gestalt language learner means since they often use words unconventionally. Many gestalt learners imitate what they heard a while ago, and they imitate what they just heard. Imitations are usually attempts to communicate.

Gestalt language learners often show a lot of interest in intonation and music. At early stages of language development, they might faithfully reproduce intonation and they might, at first, produce unclear-sounding speech. Over time, they begin to say words more clearly. Many gestalt processors enjoy humming tunes of their favourite songs before learning to say the words. Some gestalt learners can sing entire songs or say an entire prayer before using single words to communicate.

Why is it important to know whether a learner is a gestalt language processor?  Milestones of language development are different for gestalt versus analytical learners.  Each style of language learning requires different supports.  Find out more about characteristics of each stage and how to offer supports in Engaging Potential’s upcoming posts “How to Support A Gestalt Language Learner” and “Stages of Gestalt Language Learning (and what learners need at each stage)”.