The other day I came across research on ‘teaching’ Mandarin to nine-month-olds, comparing the effects of face-to-face tuition with those of tuition delivered via video or audio. The researchers expected the children who’d watched the videos to show the same kind of learning as those tutored face-to-face. Instead, they found a huge difference. The children exposed to the language through human interactions were able to discriminate between similar Mandarin sounds as well as native listeners. But the other children – regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio – showed no learning at all.
At the same time, exciting work at the National Literacy Trust is showing that the use of technology has huge potential to improve language and literacy in the early years, particularly in reducing inequalities. Their research shows that children from low-income families are more likely to have a wider vocabulary if they read stories in both print form and on a touch-screen.
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