Action words

Also called Verbs, Doing words, Actions set

Verbs are the words that let a person do things rather than name them. Why go, stop, help, want and make matter more than any hundred nouns.

What it is

Action words are verbs: go, stop, come, eat, drink, play, help, want, like, look, give, make, open, wash, sleep, finish. They are the engine of a sentence. A board full of nouns lets a person point at the world; a board with verbs lets them act on it.

Most first boards are almost entirely nouns, because nouns are easy to draw and easy to hand over. The result is a person who can say "ball" but not "throw", "door" but not "open", "Mum" but not "come". Every one of those gaps is a thing the person cannot ask to happen.

Who it can help

Anyone moving beyond single-word requests, from a two-year-old to an adult. Verbs are what make the jump to sentence building possible, because a verb needs something on either side of it. They are the reason core vocabulary boards look the way they do: a handful of verbs and small words that combine with anything.

They are harder to teach than nouns and harder to draw, and a person who has been given nouns for years may take time to find them. That is a reason to start earlier, not to skip them.

How it works

A verb is drawn as a figure doing the thing, which is why action symbols are often stick people mid-motion. The label matters even more than usual, because "open" and "close" can look alike in a drawing. Tense is rarely marked on a board; "go" stands for went and going too, and the listener works out when from the rest of the sentence or the time words.

The most useful verbs are the general ones. "Go", "do", "make", "get", "put", "want", "like", "help", "stop" and "look" cover a startling amount of daily life when combined with a noun or a pointing finger. Specific verbs (swim, bake, hoover) belong in the person's fringe vocabulary.

The Talk board keeps its verbs in an actions set among its 14, so a person reaches for "go", "stop", "help" or "play" in one known place and adds the noun from another.

Getting started

This week, add ten verbs to any board that has fewer, and put them where the person can reach them from every page. Model one verb in every activity: "open" the box, "stop" the music, "go" to the car, pressed on the board as you say it.

Play with them. "Stop" and "go" in a game of musical statues is a lesson nobody notices they are having. "Help" is worth modelling a hundred times, because a person who can ask for help stops needing to scream for it.

Resist the urge to correct tense or word order. "Go park" is a perfect sentence for now.

Where to get help

Speech and Language UK explains how verbs develop in children and why they lag nouns. Communication Matters for core vocabulary design. A speech and language therapist can pick the verbs the person needs most.