Child Language Development Node

Meet one of our fieldworkers: Joyce Mantyi!

She is a data collector for the isiXhosa CDI Project and we asked her some questions about her experience.

Swipe to see what she has to say!

ARTICLE OF THE MONTH📝📚

This month’s article, written by George Kachergis and colleagues, investigates a potential new method to determine which vocabulary items should be used on new adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. This method determines items by analysing psychometric properties of the translation-equivalent concepts that are frequently included on existing CDIs.

Swipe for more information.

Looking for a simple way to grow your child’s vocabulary? Try this easy game at home 🎲

Welcome to the very first edition of our Did You Know? series! 🎉

We’re kicking things off with gestures;one of the earliest and most important building blocks of communication. Long before children say their first words, they are already communicating through reaching, pointing, showing, waving, and many other gestures.

In this post, we’ll explore some fascinating facts about gesture development and the milestones children typically reach as they grow. Understanding these early gestures can provide valuable insight into how language develops and how children connect with the world around them.

Follow along for more child language development facts, milestones, and practical insights in future editions of our Did You Know? series! 💬👶✨

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We’re excited to share that last month, we successfully hosted the first R training workshop at Stellenbosch University in collaboration with SADiLaR’s Escalator.

A heartfelt thank you to all the participants who joined us and made the sessions engaging, insightful, and impactful. Your enthusiasm for learning and data visualisation in R made the experience truly rewarding.

We are also deeply grateful to SADiLaR for their continued partnership and support in advancing digital scholarship and capacity building.

We look forward to hosting more learning opportunities and building on this momentum together.

The CLDN has written an article for Child Magazine that discusses the importance of early gestures in language development 🫵🏻
Follow the link below to read all about it: https://www.childmag.co.za/gestures-supercharge-early-learning/

Happy International Children's Day!🧸

Today we would like to take a moment to celebrate our children and childhood. The CLDN values empowering parents and children with the tools they need to ensure healthy language development. We look forward to seeing and being part of further development of educational resources for our children.

South African Sign Language Dissemination Event: Promoting Inclusion in Digital Spaces The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), in collaboration with its Child Language Development node at Stellenbosch University, will...

In honour of Play Day today 🧸✨

Quiet play is still powerful play.

Children who prefer spending playtime on their own are still developing important communication and language skills through imagination, self-talk, storytelling, and problem-solving. Even in silence, there is often a rich world of thinking, creating, and learning taking place 💛
development