The ever-playful Ling Ling Bird returns with a boldly illustrated story encouraging early learners to practice new speech sounds and the 'serve and return' of conversation.

Ling Ling Bird knows he's a bird, but what kind of bird is he? He is determined to find out! Along the way, he not only encounters a dazzling array of other birds, but also a range of different speech sounds. He learns some new vocabulary and a critical skill for developing communication: two-way engagement. What fun it is too! And to top it all, the story ends with a joyful song, set to a familiar, family-favourite tune - when you see the words, you'll know it straight away! (If not, check out the AVID Language website, where all is revealed...)

Parents and professionals can use this book as a fun and incentivising way to support speech and language development in their very early listeners and learners:

The book supports the development of strong listening skills by utilising the 'audition before vision' mechanism (we hear the names and sounds of new birds before we see them on the following page), which allows the child's brain to focus on the sounds they are hearing before the visual part of the brain takes over. Repetition of different speech sounds within the story reinforces the learning and retention of these sounds. The repetitive structure of the story encourages the practice of 'auditory closure' (the adult reader pauses when reading to allow the child to fill in the gap/pre-empt the next words.) This is highly incentivising for children, and can encourage reticent children to have a go at using their voices without feeling under any pressure to do so. If the child is unwilling or unable to fill the gap, after a pause the adult can repeat and complete the sentence, thereby modelling the language to the child. Next time around, or the time after that (or the time after that!) the child may have a go themselves. The more children hear words, the sooner they will be able to say them, so while repetition may feel frustrating or boring to adult readers, it is highly beneficial to little language learners. The question-and-answer format supports two-way engagement between adult and child, providing a fun way to practice the 'serve and return' of conversation (without the child even realising they are practicing!). As the book becomes more familiar to the child, the adult and child can swap roles, with one initially asking the questions and the other answering, and then reversing the roles. The book can be used to introduce the notion that there can be different types of things within a broader category. In this case, all the characters in the book are birds (category) but they are all different species (types).