... be assumed that she is pointing at something and using visualisation in order to advance Tom's learning. His mum also asks him to interact by asking him 'how many chickens are there?' By counting the chickens Tom is learning both numerical and linguistic skills. By focusing Tom's attention on objects, she is increasing his word meanings. His mother also asks; Mother: and we saw some chickens this morning, didn't we?" Tom: we did By using a tag question (lexis), she is informing Tom of the correct answer, but still allows him to understand the question and reply in his own time. By doing this, Tom's attention is drawn to the memory of seeing chickens instead of the question. He therefore learns to attach the title 'chicken' to the animals he has seen, which avoids overgeneralization. Tom and his mother mostly use interactional language in order to make contact with ...

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