Language Skills: Listening and Speaking

Children need to hear a language in order to learn to speak it. Playing and interacting with others provide meaningful contexts for them to speak and communicate with confidence. Listening and speaking skills in the preschool years are essential as they lay the foundation for later reading and writing. Children may go through these four phases of language acquisition:

• Observation: Children act as spectators, observing and learning as teachers and peers use language to express themselves and communicate with others. They may not speak up yet.

• Participation: Children take part in the play, conversation or discussion with guidance from the teacher.

• Practice: Children practise using language through a variety of opportunities such as role-play, group discussions, show and tell.

• Performance: Children feel confident and are able to independently use language to communicate with others and express needs, wants and ideas.

Some children come from bilingual or multilingual environments, while others use only one language at home. Find out about the five stages of second language acquisition to understand and support these children.