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September, 2007
Speech & Language Tip
of the Month
Teaching Your Child
to Answer & Ask Questions
Answering and asking
questions is a crucial element to mastering
conversational skills. Once your child is able to
label objects and people, and put words together it
is time to teach them how to answer and ask
questions.
First it is important
to consider different types of questions and their
hierarchy of difficulty. Below is a list of some of
the earliest learned question types from easiest to
most difficult and simple ways to target them:
¨
“Yes/No” Questions
They can be answered with a gesture or one spoken
word.
§ Answering:
(Example: “Do you want milk?”) A fun game to teach
this concept is to hide objects and look for one in
particular by asking “Is this the ball?” “Yes!” or
“Is this the shoe?” “No!”
§ Asking:
(Example: Can I have milk?) When the situation
arises, model the question form for your child, and
then have them repeat it to you. Example: When
your child wants milk try this:
·
Parent “Do you want
milk?”
·
Child “yes”
·
Parent “OK, say can I
have milk?”
·
Child “Can I have
milk?
·
Parent “YES!!! Great
job!!”
¨
“What’s This”
Questions
These questions can be answered by labeling
objects.
§ Answering:
To teach this, try to give your child a choice of
answers. Example: “What is this?” “A truck or
ball?”
§ Asking:
Play a grab bag game of hiding objects with you
asking the questions, then reverse rolls and have
the child ask the “What’s this?” question.
¨
“Where” Questions
These questions are answered by pointing, searching
and finding something/someone.
§ Answering:
You can teach these while reading books and finding
things on the pages. You can also play a hiding
game and hide objects around the room and find them
when answering the question “Where is the ____?”
§ Asking:
Have child imitate your question and you provide the
answer.
¨
“Who” Questions
These
questions require an answer including a person.
§ Answering:
These can be targeted by looking at a family photo
album and asking “Who is this?”
§ Asking:
Have child imitate your question and you provide the
answer.
Be
sure to only work on one question type at a time.
Make sure that your child can answer the certain
question types accurately (receptive skill) before
working on having the child ask the question
(expressive skill).
Sincerely,
Meredith B. Sorokwasz M.A., CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist
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