Language Acq in adopted children

[Coreda at aol.com]

Hello all -

I'm Cynthia Core, mother of a recently adopted one-year-old from China.  I'm
a doctoral candidate in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of
Florida, and I received the following question from one of the parents I
traveled with.  I have some ideas about responding to her, but I was very
curious to see what this particular group of researchers would have to offer.


<<Here is a question - how consistent should I be in word selection? I
know to do what I consider basics very consistently, but in regular
conversation we choose different words for the same thing all the
time (I don't have good examples in mind right now, but some are
little differences - like TV v. television or Bike v Bicycle - and
some are bigger - synonyms, for example. Also, tense changes - so
words sound different - some more than others. I keep thinking that
this child that needs to build a vocabulary from scratch will be
confused and her understanding will be slowed when natural language
variations occur.

I would appreciate any input that you all can offer.  Also, I would like any
leads on researchers who are currently addressing the issue of language
change in children adopted from non-English speaking countries.
Thank you.
Cynthia Core
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