Throughout our lives, questions play a hugely important role, and that is certainly the case for the development of children’s language skills and in speech therapy for children whose language development is hindered in some way.
In truth, there are few situations in which questions do not occur whether that be in education, at work, when having fun, and even in our personal life when we ask someone out on that first date.
There are very few scenarios where questions do not help, and this is probably why speech pathologists have identified questions as a key tool for helping the speech and language development of children.
One of the key benefits of questions is that asking them does not require any professional speech therapy qualification and thus it allows parents to use them to support their child’s language development.
Continue reading and we will highlight all the different kinds of questions you can ask a child in supporting their speech and language development.
In addition, we also have some tips to avoid your questioning overwhelming a child.
Question Types
Below are the various types of questions you can ask and examples of them.
Yes/No: Arguably the simplest of all question types for a child to understand and reply to, where the answer is either Yes or No
- Do you want a drink?
- Are you tired?
- Do you want to go to the park?
Either/Or: Another question with only two responses but the two choices will change depending on what is being asked.
- Do you want orange juice or apple juice?
- Are you wearing your shoes or your boots?
- Is the blue ball or the red ball the biggest?
Where/What/Who/When/Why/How
All the following question types are open to multiple answers rather than two alternatives.
These will often require the child to think about concepts and words which hopefully will help develop their understanding of language and enhance their vocabulary.
| Where
•Where did you put your school bag? • Where would you like to go for lunch? •Where are your shoes?
|
What
•What did she say to you? •What did you do at school today? •What game would you like to play? |
Who
• Who is your favourite Disney character? •Who is your best friend? •Who are you going to visit later? |
| When
•When does your school day start? •When is your friend’s birthday party? •When does the movie begin?
|
Why
• Why are you crying? •Why do you like it? •Why is the dog barking? |
How
•How did you hurt yourself? •How did it get up there? •How much cereal do you want? |
Asking Questions Versus Interrogation
Occasionally a parent will be so keen to use questions to help their child’s language development that they ask them rapid-fire or incessantly.
To the child that can be overwhelming to the extent that they feel they are being interrogated.
For this reason, it is wise to mix up how you are communicating by having an array of questions and other ways of talking to the child.
Here are some examples.
- Commenting: As the child is taking part in any kind of activity with you, talk to them about what you and they are doing or seeing
- e.g. You are eating your apple / We can see the large tree.
- Repetition: As the child speaks, repeat back to them what they have said.
- It reassures them that you are listening, allows you to correct their mistakes, and also embeds correct language in their mind.
- Expanding: This is when you add something to what the child has said.
- For example “I see a car”, would be expanded by yourself to “I see a red car”.
- Explaining: This is simply doing what all parents should do which is helping your child to understand everything they encounter by explaining it to them and saying what is happening.
- e.g. “The bus driver has stopped the bus to let people get on and off”.
