A short monologue by Ming (Agents of Speech) arguing that common flashcard practice—teaching nouns—is ineffective for children with speech delays because nouns are minimally communicative. Ming recommends prioritizing play-based teaching that emphasizes verbs and adjectives (actions and descriptors), which he says better enable real communication (e.g., ‘I want to eat’, ‘I want to leave’).
Most words on flashcards are nouns. Nouns are not good for communicating. What's the point of knowing all the words, the nouns of everything here? I can just point it out. I can say, I want that one. And that's it, right? You've been to a foreign country, I want this. That's it. And pretty much that's all you need to know. So nouns are not very communicative. The most communicative words in the world are actually verbs and adjectives. If someone asks you, what do you want to do? I want to leave, I want to eat, I want to. Whatever. Those are verbs, those are much more communicative than if you say, what do you want to do? And you can say cookie or like chicken, and then it could go either way. You can eat a chicken. You could farm a chicken. I don't know. See chicken in the. In the zoo, if there are any. So it doesn't make sense, right? So the words you teach your children must be play based and verb related, okay?
