It Takes Two Tongues to Talk
- By John Ebbert -
You might say to yourself, “I can talk just fine with my one tongue.” I’ll tell you, though, it didn’t start out that way. At the beginning, you couldn’t do it on your own; you needed someone else doing the talking for you. You needed someone else’s tongue twisting out those sounds that you later came to recognize as words. You needed someone talking with you so that, eventually, you could talk yourself.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: The words printed in books don’t mean anything to babies. Babies don’t need there to be any words on the page. They don’t read. They are using their senses to acquire language. They are using their eyes, their ears. They are reacting to you as you investigate books together. The words are there for you.
Dooleyglot books are all about investigation. They are about using a young child’s innate visual sense to discover and learn. It’s no accident that there is a simple object floating in space on one page, and that same object is found centered among a complex swirl of bold lines and brilliant colors on the facing page. These environments are constructed to help a child work to perceive. They’re built to help you takes things further.
These are no normal baby books. The images in these books are meant to induce the same sorts of visual complexities that a child encounters in real life: objects seen in a busy context, in variable conditions, from different perspectives, of different types, even in pieces. The highly-keyed colors and interlaced shapes keep eyes moving and trying to find more. Adults also enjoy investigating these wonderful environments, once they get past the idea that they are looking at a baby book.
Dooleyglot books are excellent tools for acquiring language better and faster. Maybe this sounds boastful. Making great claims is one thing, showing the truth of them is quite another.
Here are a couple of examples to make things clearer:
Typically: A parent and child sit down together to look at a first words book. Here’s a book on TOYS. They open the book and the child immediately sees a ball floating in the center of a white page.
The parent says, “Ball.”
The child tries too, “Ball.”
“Yay! Good!” the parent squeals, and they move to the next page—Blocks, or whatever.
This is the way first words books are normally used. The child, after some practice, learns a word, ties it to a symbolic representation of that word, and moves on.
Dooleyglot books work differently.
A parent and child sit down together to look at a Dooleyglot book. Here’s a book on TOYS. They open the book and the child immediately sees a ball floating in the center of a white page.
The parent says, “Ball.”
The child tries too, “Ball.”
“Yay! Good!” the parent squeals. Then they look at the facing page.
The parent says, “Oh, my, what’s over here? Can you find the ball over here?” And it’s like a switch has been turned on. Because the child’s brain has been primed by seeing the object on the simple white background, it has no problem discovering the ball in the middle of the complex context: the exploration environment.
The child points out the object, says “Ball,” and feels the excitement of accomplishment.
The parent says, “Wow! Can you find any other balls?”
Together they look. Together they share an experience. They use more words together that modify the experience of the balls they find. Because the child’s brain has been stimulated to investigate, it is more open to learning in a deeper sense.
If educators are to be believed, it is the access to quality words, heard early and often, that gives a child a leg up on acquiring language robustly. Quality words are considered as nouns and their significant modifiers—words that describe how things are, not just what things are. That Dooleyglot books provide a tool for just that type of interaction—while also stimulating the creative, perceptive, and visual parts of the brain—can make all the difference in the process of learning. Languages are learned more quickly and richly as a result. This is true no matter what language you are sharing.
We know it works. We have seen, time and time again, how children respond to the books—how they engage with them. The very young, 15 months and younger, have success at finding the base image. Toddlers elate in their ability to find more: pointing out types, colors, other examples. Parents are delighted with the richness and beauty of the books, and especially, with the delightful experiences they share with their children.
