TalkTogether | Supporting Oral Language Development | A programme of research funded by UKRI-GCRF

Welcome

TalkTogether is a UKRI GCRF-funded research project based at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, The Promise Foundation (Bangalore, India) and Georgia State University (USA).  Former collaborators also include the University of the Philippines (Diliman, the Philippines) and Interactive Children's Literacy Programme (Metro Manila, the Philippines).

This international collaborative project looks at oral language development in young children aged 3-6 in urban poor areas.  Between 2019-2022 India (Kannada) and the Philippines (Filipino) were the focal countries and languages.  Since 2022 the project has been continuing to develop its work in relation to Kannada and has introduced a new Hindi workstream along with Language and Learning Foundation (New Delhi, India).

A foundation of strong oral language cascades to improved reading and writing in school, and beyond. We aim to use a mixed-methods approach to map the language experiences of young children in multilingual settings. We also aim to co-develop with cultural actors interventions that draw upon local oral language traditions. New ways of assessing children’s oral language is another aim. Here, we are adding ideas to a toolkit for teachers and learning assessments that are used at scale.

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