Preschoolers who are meeting developmental milestones are already on their way to building effective communication skills. Children ages 3 to 4 should be able to speak in simple sentences of three to four words, engage in self-talk during tasks and ask questions, and they should have a vocabulary of more than 300 words. These standards of acquisition are true of single language learners, and children who are learning dual languages often have the same number of words in their vocabularies, but those words will be spread out among both languages.
Children at this age are just beginning to grasp nonverbal communication. When you read with your child, or watch a TV show, ask the child what the characters are thinking or feeling. When they answer, talk about why they think the character feels that way. Help the child note facial expressions and how they match the character's words and actions. Model expressions for your child and have them guess which emotion is expressed. Talk about previous experiences to help the child scaffold previous knowledge with new learning.
Preschoolers are developing reading readiness skills, and media in their environment help them learn that print is a form of communication. Many children can recognize common symbols and the words that go along with them, for example, "stop" on a stop sign or a common restaurant logo. This is the beginning of understanding symbols as meaningful communication. Parents can foster this even more by pointing out text in their everyday lives -- on a computer screen, in the grocery store or on a to-do list posted on the refrigerator. During a bedtime story, parents can point to the text as they read to the child and encourage them to point out words that they recognize. These activities foster communication skills that will help them achieve in school and in daily living.
Children who are not meeting developmental milestones may require intervention, such as therapy with a speech-language pathologist. The SLP will diagnose and treat the language delay and give parents activities to help reinforce therapy at home. Children who are having difficulty communicating their needs because of hearing, language or motor delays can be taught cued speech. This form of communication uses hand signals combined with the spoken word to reinforce receptive language, while giving the child a means to express his needs.