Warm Up
Do you have any Kids?
What are your parents like?
Do you like talking with people?
Reading
Chatty Parents May Inspire Chatty Babies
A new study says that young children are likely to talk more if they spend time with adults who do a lot of talking. A team of researchers wanted to find out more about the things that affect the development of speech in children. The researchers used data from previous studies that had recorded children's speech using small wearable audio recorders. They studied almost 40,000 hours of recordings of over 1,000 children aged between 2 months and 4 years. The children were from 12 countries on six continents.
The study found that the age of the child affected the number of words and sounds they made. But it also found that talkative parents usually had talkative children. Children who spent time with adults who spoke a lot made more noises or used more words. On average, children spoke 27 times more per hour for every 100 extra adult words they heard. According to the researchers, the number of vocalizations children make is also closely linked to the size of their vocabulary.
However, Michael Frank, a scientist from Stanford University, told Science that this may not mean that children speak more because they hear more words. It may be that adults reply more to children who are already speaking more.
Reading Comprehension
How old were the children in the study?
What data did the researchers use in the study?
What are "vocalizations"?
Discussion Questions
What are your thoughts on the findings of this study?
Do you know any particularly chatty kids? Are their parents also chatty?
Were you talkative when you were a child?
Do you know what some of your first words were?
Who's the most talkative person you know?
What were you like when you were a kid? Has your personality changed much?
If you could pick one trait for your kid to have, what would it be?
What are some of the best parenting tips you've heard?
Who's the smartest kid you've ever met?
Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are. — Jim Henson. What your thoughts on this quote?
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