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Modelling sentence structure for your child

 In Blog, Education, Literacy, Speech and Language, Speech Therapy

Children who say their words in the wrong order or use the wrong tense can sound cute…. for a while, but then it begins to affect their social interactions.

Common Examples of word confusion include:

  •       Saying “I can have that” instead of “can I have that please”
  •       “Tomorrow, I went to the zoo” instead of “Yesterday, I went to the zoo”
  •       “I can’t know” instead of “I don’t know”
  •       “I putted my hat on” instead of “I put my hat on”
  •       “We goed to the shops” instead of “we went to the shops”.
  •       “Emma wants the apple” instead of “I want the apple”.

Using words in the wrong order or with the wrong tense can impact your child by:

  •       Making them sound younger than their age
  •       Making it difficult for them to accurately get their message across to others
  •       Lowering their self-esteem because others don’t understand them
  •       People misinterpreting what they are trying to say

A few simple strategies just might do the trick to help get the word order correct. Try these with your child:

  •       Model the use of correct sentence structure to your child in everyday conversation.
  •       Don’t jump in – let your child finish their sentence first before correcting them.
  •       Narrate – as you go about your day with your little helper, talk about everything together. This provides an opportunity to model lots of great sentences to your child.
  •       Games – develop games that require your child to repetitively use a correct grammatical formation (e.g. when working on requesting starting with “I” you could get your child to requests parts of a game, such as a puzzle: “I want the apple please”, “I want the car please”).

For further support, call 1800 Kid Sense (1800 543 736) to book an appointment with one of our friendly Speech Pathologists.

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