Developing Language and Thinking Skills Together as Parent and Child

2020/06/26

Many people agree from experience that language skills significantly impact a child's academic performance. Numerous guidebooks on how to improve children's language skills have been published; while some are excellent works by researchers, others contain claims that are scientifically unconvincing. For readers without specialized knowledge of language development, it is difficult to know which ones to trust. In such a situation, what the reader needs is to understand "why" a particular method is effective. However, most books confidently claim methods to "double a child's vocabulary" without providing any evidence.

I wrote this book with the hope that readers without specialized knowledge of linguistics or developmental psychology could understand and be convinced by an explanation of why commonly practiced methods (such as memorizing words with flashcards) do not yield good long-term results, based on the mechanisms of language development. The meaning of a word is essentially something an adult cannot teach; children can only learn it through their own inference. Children are "language detectives." The best thing an adult can do is create an environment that facilitates inference. In this book, I propose ways to help children's inference based on evidence from numerous studies in developmental psychology, including my own research.

Another point that distinguishes this book from others is its clear, scientific explanation of the relationship between language development and thinking skills. Children infer and memorize in order to use language. In that process, not only their ability to use language but also their ability to think grows. Thinking skills refer to the ability to solve or discover problems, supported by an information processing system in the brain that selects information and suppresses unnecessary data. Inferring the meanings of many words from early childhood through school age promotes the growth of this internal information processing system. This also leads to improved academic performance, as effectively using this system is essential for reading, listening, and understanding in all subjects. In short, the more children infer word meanings and enrich their vocabulary, the more their thinking skills and academic performance will grow.

Developing Language and Thinking Skills Together as Parent and Child

Mutsumi Imai

Chikumashobo

160 pages, 1,300 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.