• Acoustic highlighting is a terrific strategy to use while also building your child’s language up by imitating his words and adding just a little more.
  • Acoustic highlighting just means putting a bit more emphasis on the new word you’re adding for your child, by saying it a little more loudly, a little more slowly, a little more sing-song, or a little more expressively than the rest of the phrase you’re saying.
  • Just like highlighting with a yellow marker does for words on a page,acoustic highlighting adds a bit of emphasis and draws the child’s attention to what you want him to focus on.
  • Acoustic highlighting refers to spoken words, of course, but this strategy is easily adapted to signing – just add a bit more facial expression, size, range, or time to the new words you want to emphasize!
  • Here’s an example, if your child tells you his book bag is “broken”, you can emphasize the new word, “torn”, but saying it more slowly, and with a little more stress on the word:
    • Child: “My bag is broken.”
      Mom/Dad:  “Your book bag is torn. It has a hole in the bottom. It’s torn."
      Child “My book bag is torn.”

Tip #8: The Bottom Line:
Emphasize new words or ideas by saying them (signing them) a little more slowly, carefully, loudly (largely) so your child will pay more attention to them.