Cosmotots-iqd: The importance of language proficiency in child education

In designing our children’s FOUNDATIONAL EDUCATION, we should place a premium on the development of their language proficiency and this must be engineered while the child’s mind is still malleable and plastic – the critical learning period, which is the first six years of life.

Language proficiency may be perceived as basic, intermediate or advanced. At the basic level, language proficiency empowers the child not just to communicate verbally with others in any social situation but also to become a READER-CHILD. As mentioned above, this is a critical stage in a child’s language development. If it is neglected or not properly leveraged, it is unlikely that the child can graduate in good time to the next level, which is true literacy: the ability to read and write well.

At the intermediate level stage of a child’s progress in language development, the all important key is write-ability. When a child can communicate in writing with ease and fluency, he or she becomes a WRITER-CHILD. Such a candidate can be empowered to become more exacting not just in linguistic expressions but more importantly, in think-ability. Ideally, this stage of a child’s development should be reached before puberty when the untrained mind begins to lose its plasticity. Know that if a child can be endowed to be a reader and writer before puberty, the plasticity of his or her mind may remain for life. Therefore, time is of the essence in a child’s language development.

There is a need to emphasise that writing is an exacting skill, a skill which requires different levels of language proficiency in order to be able to express different complexities of thoughts. Thoughts are harvested from many sources but mainly from reading and readership, as well as group (class) activities over well invested time. To write and communicate at an advanced level, it is necessary to acquire thinking skills which encompass imagination and logical correlation. Indeed, a child’s attainment of advanced language proficiency by the end of secondary schooling should be a primary objective regardless of what he or she eventually studies at the university.

Children are social creatures who need to communicate with others not just their feelings but also their thoughts in a language. They require EDUCATION whether formal or informal and the level of his eventual educational achievement is correlated directly with the level of his language proficiency. Most parents, if not all, realise by now that there’s no relying on the way things are being done conventionally in school, for unfortunately, that will be a far way from success for their kids.

How can parents support language development in early childhood?

The simple answer is to provide the ideal ENVIRONMENT where their children can have lots of opportunities to read, write and discuss. At Cosmotots-iqd, parents can expect their children to be on this almost forgotten path to true, gratifying success throughout their schooling journey and beyond. Books – lots of them – are the main ‘syllabus’ at this English language as well as IQ development centre.

Unlike what one would expect from any other early education centre, language development centre, or even enrichment centre, children who attend Cosmotots-iqd partake in extensive reading, which is essentially the key to success. They are guided to the point of being skilled at reading, as they build their vocabulary, strengthen their grammar, spell and write with confidence, compose essays, and hold discussions. All of these are essential to open more doors for greater opportunities in their future.

The primary objective of foundational education is the nurturing of a whole host of basic skills such as social-ability, logic-ability, personality, communication, imagination, etc., and all these cannot be achieved without first developing the child’s language proficiency, and this is where the focus is at Cosmotots-iqd.

At Cosmotots-iqd, children enjoy their right to explore and progress at their own pace, even as their attentions are guided and directed to the next level of achievement. The centre was established when its founder came to realise that children will not likely achieve their greatest potential if parents were to merely depend on our conventional schooling system. Too little focus is placed on reading! Sadly, as most parents can tell us, rote learning and memorising seem to take precedence instead.

Can you imagine what it would be like for your child to be able to skillfully articulate his or her opinions on pen and paper? We’ll have to keep well in mind though, that it all begins with being well-read. Only through reading and understanding what is being read, and being able to speak of what was read, can children learn ways of expressing themselves and their ideas to the world!

For more on how to be more supportive in our children’s foundational education and language development, parents are welcome to connect with Cosmotots-iqd.