The Foundation We Can't See: Why Preschool Oral Language Skills Matter in Early Literacy
When I was a sophomore in high school, a woman in our neighborhood was looking for a babysitter. Naturally, babysitting was my jam! It was pretty clear from a very young age that I loved little ones.
But this was not your typical babysitting job. I would be babysitting quadruplet two-year-olds!
Yes. You read that right. A 15-year-old babysitting four two-year-olds! You might be thinking I was crazy for taking the job, or maybe the family was crazy to think I could handle four two-year-olds! But honestly, it was remarkably easier than you might think.
They were like a little flock of ducklings. If one climbed into my lap, all four wanted a spot. If one sat down at the little table for snack, the others followed. They moved together, played together, and ate together.
But there is one thing about those four little ones that has stuck with me all these years: nap time.
I would put each child into their individual crib, all in the same room. I could see them on the monitor, and at first, they were all standing up, reaching toward one another.
But that wasn't what caught my attention. It was the babbling. This wasn't the kind of random babbling I expected from typical two-year-olds. They were clearly having back-and-forth exchanges. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but they were responding to one another, taking turns, reacting, and continuing the conversation. They really had their own language!
That experience has stayed with me because it is such a beautiful reminder of something we sometimes forget: babies are born ready to learn language.
From the very beginning, their brains are wired to take in sounds, watch faces, notice patterns, and learn from the people around them. And those early interactions matter. They matter a lot.
They are listening, watching and taking turns. They are learning vocabulary, how sentences work and how to express an idea and understand someone else's. And all of that becomes part of the foundation for future literacy!
So as we kick off our six-part series on the components of early literacy, we're going back to the true foundation of it all, oral language, the foundation underneath so much of what comes next. Let's dive in!
What Exactly Is Oral Language?
Simply put, oral language is how we communicate through speaking and listening. It includes both receptive language and expressive language.
Receptive Language: This is what a child understands. It includes understanding words, directions, questions, sentences, stories, and conversations.
Expressive Language: This is what a child communicates. It includes the words, sentences, ideas, questions, descriptions, and stories a child uses to communicate with others.
Oral language is so much more than simply knowing a lot of words. It includes:
Vocabulary
Listening comprehension
Sentence structure
Grammar
Conversation
Asking and answering questions
Describing
Explaining
Retelling
Making connections
Telling stories
Expressing ideas and feelings
In other words, oral language is the language children will eventually bring to reading.
Why Do Preschool Oral Language Skills Matter?
Long before children learn to read, they are already learning how language works, and that foundation matters as they grow into readers. The foundation is already being built.
Children are born ready to learn language, and those language skills grow through interactions with the people around them. One of the most important ways this happens is through serve and return.
A child babbles, points, gestures, asks a question, looks at something, or says something. We respond. The child responds back. And the conversation continues.
That back-and-forth matters. These everyday exchanges help build the brain connections that support language and learning. Harvard's Center on the Developing Child describes responsive, back-and-forth interactions (serve and return) as an important part of building brain architecture and supporting early language and social development. Learn how to support serve and return here!
In language-rich environments, children are constantly hearing new words, practicing back-and-forth exchanges, making connections, and learning how communication works. Each of these interactions gives the developing brain opportunities to build and strengthen the pathways that support language.
And the opposite matters, too. When children have fewer opportunities for these everyday interactions and exchanges, they have fewer opportunities to build and strengthen those early language pathways.
Research agrees. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 72 longitudinal studies involving more than 23,000 children found that preschool vocabulary and grammar were significantly related to later reading comprehension, word reading, and pseudoword reading. In other words, what children know about language before they become readers matters.
What does this mean? Talking during snack, describing what we're building, wondering out loud about a bug on the playground. Those moments matter. Children are not "just talking." They are building the foundation for literacy success in the future.
6 Ways to Build Stronger Preschool Oral Language Skills
The good news about preschool oral language skills is that you don't need another complicated program. You need to make the language opportunities already happening in your classroom more intentional. Here are six ways to build oral language with your students!
1. Talk with Children, Not Just to Them
Give children opportunities to respond. Instead of asking question after question, make it a conversation.
Teacher: "I noticed you built a really tall tower."
Child: "It's a castle."
Teacher: "A castle! Who lives in your castle?"
Then wait. Give the child time to think and respond. That back-and-forth is where the magic happens.
2. Expand What Children Say
When a child gives you a short response, don't immediately correct it. Build on it.
Child: "Big truck."
Teacher: "Yes! That's a huge red truck. Is it going somewhere?"
Child: "Doggie running."
Teacher: "The dog is running really fast. Is he chasing an animal?"
You're giving children richer language without turning the interaction into a lesson.
3. Act Out and Use New Vocabulary Words
Don't just introduce a new vocabulary word. Use it.
If you're talking about pumpkins: "That pumpkin is enormous! Enormous means HUGE! Let's use our bodies and become HUGE! Let's compare the enormous pumpkin to this tiny one. Which one is heavier? How do you know?"
The more children hear and use a word in meaningful contexts, the more opportunities they have to understand and eventually use it themselves.
4. Wait Longer
This one is simple (and difficult, all at the same time!). Ask. Pause. Wait.
Children need time to process what they've heard, organize their thoughts, and formulate a response. Try counting silently to five before jumping in. You might be surprised by what happens when we give children a little more wait time. Sometimes the answer is coming. We just have to give it time.
5. Make It Real
Bring in real objects to touch, explore, talk about, and connect to.
If you are learning about pumpkins, bring them in to touch and explore. If you are talking about foods from home, bring in spices to smell. Real objects from both your home and theirs can really bring the learning to life. Let them touch it, examine it, describe it, and share what they already know.
Real objects give children something meaningful to connect to, and those connections create natural opportunities for language.
6. Value Conversations Over Completion
Sometimes we get so focused on finishing the book or completing the activity that we miss the conversation happening right in front of us.
Maybe you're reading a story and a child suddenly says, "That happened at my grandma's house!" Stop and listen. Let them share. Maybe another child makes a connection, asks a question, or notices something in the picture.
Remember those serve-and-return conversations? This is it! The child shares. You respond. They respond back. The conversation grows.
You can always finish the book later. The language and connections that live within the story are what matters most.
Free Download: What is in the Bag Game? Family Letter
Grab our free family letter and begin playing two easy games that connect home and school. We think lunch or snack time would be a great time to play, but you could squeeze the game in during transitions or circle time, too!
For our little learners, families will send in one small, special item from home in a brown bag. Children can share what the item is, where it came from, and why it is special. They can touch it, explore it, describe it, and connect it to their own lives and experiences. Remember, sharing doesn't always have to happen with words. You can help children participate through pointing, gestures, sounds, signs or simply listening and observing.
For our older children, families will also send in one object in a brown bag, but this time, it becomes a classic game of 20 Questions! Children take turns asking yes-or-no questions to gather clues and figure out what is hiding inside. Is it something you eat? Is it bigger than your hand? Is it soft? Do we use it at home?
Remember, children need practice with these skills! You may need to model how to ask a question, offer a few choices, or give a little scaffolding as they learn how to keep the conversation going.
Two simple games to connect to children's lives while watching their oral language grow! Both family letters are linked below so you can send them home this month:
Be sure to check out more of our favorite playful learning games here: www.movinglittleminds.com/shop.
Final Thoughts
I think sometimes we make early literacy much more complicated than it needs to be. We talk about programs, standards, assessments, activities, and everything we need to fit into the day.
But underneath all of it is something incredibly simple: talk with children. Listen to children. Give them something to talk about. Give them words for what they are seeing, doing, thinking, and feeling, and do it with intention.
A child building a tower is learning when we talk about tall, short, balance, higher, lower, sturdy, and collapse. A child pretending to run a restaurant is building language when we talk about menu, order, customer, chef, and serve. A child exploring outside is building language when we stop to wonder, describe, compare, and ask questions.
That is the heart of intentional early literacy. Before children can read the words on a page, they need a language-rich world to make sense of those words.
And sometimes, the most powerful literacy instruction doesn't look like literacy instruction at all. It looks like four little two-year-olds standing in their cribs, carrying on a conversation in a language their 15-year-old babysitter couldn't understand. And all these years later, I'm still thinking about it.
Oral Language is Just the Beginning
Oral language is just one piece of the early literacy puzzle.
In my new book, The Early Literacy Shift: An Early Childhood Educator’s Guide to Merging Research and Play, I explore how we can bring research-based practices into everyday preschool experiences, from phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge to concepts of print, early writing, and comprehension.
My goal is simple: to help educators move beyond knowing what children need to learn and feel confident about how to teach it through meaningful, playful experiences. Because we shouldn’t have to choose between research-based instruction and play. We can, and should, bring them together.
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