Stages of child language development- spoken language

 

 

It genuinely interests and surprises me how quickly babies learn to communicate, and not only that aspect but also from the perspective of the parents and how they understand what the child is asking them for. in my research i am going to be looking at stages of child language development from being in the womb up to the age of 5.Even though it may seem that there is no order of how children learn this is not the case. They will start off speaking vowels which they will do with a rounded mouth "oo", "ah" , then consonants "b","p","g","k","m","d","t","n" because these are easier to pronounce rather than "s" or "z" which many children aren't able to do at that age.

The Womb:

In my research i found that even when babies are in the womb they are already starting to detect some noise although the sound is limited, by week 16 of the pregnancy babies can hear what is happening for example: when the mother's stomach rumbles or when air is travelling in and out of the lungs and by week 24 the baby starts responding to the noises and voices.

0-3 months: Babies have distinguished cries for different situations, a cry could mean a variety of things; hungry, tired, unhappy etc. At this age they are able to smile and usually do this to voices or faces that are familiar to them.

 4-6 months:


This is usually the stage where babies become fascinated with toys, especially toys that make noise or have a certain texture for them to touch. They will start to tell you what they want by using hand gestures eg. pointing or making a grabbing motion with their hands. At this stage this is where the child becomes more vocal, by gargling or babbling, it often sounds like he/she is talking, they also use a lot of bilabial sounds such as "p", "m","w", and "b".

 7-12 months:


At this stage he/she have probably said their first words which could be anything but the most common ones are: "dada" ,"mama","no","bye bye" and "night night".  More consonants, long and short vowels are used too, they will start to use words or other noises rather than crying to tell you what they want. They can also recognise and respond to questions "where's daddy gone?" , they have learnt their own name and will look at you when you call them. Games and nursery rimes become fun and they will start to lean the tune.

 1-2 years:

Words are developing and are becoming easier to understand as more consonants are used. They might start asking their own questions "more chippies", "what's that?" and in return will respond to more questions. They can learn each of their boys parts and point them out. They also will want the same story, game or song repeated numerous amounts of times.

 2-3 years:

Toddlers will understand two stage commands "bring your cup over here and put it on the table", they will also understand meanings and concepts "yucky", "nice". At this stage the child's vocabulary is developing rapidly, they will use a lot of utterances which will be easy for family members to understand.



3-4 years:
Speech is now becoming fluent, clearer and easier for people other than family members to understand, they will talk about anything! usually to do with nursery or what they did at the park etc. Sentences are longer as they can combine together four or more words.



4-5 years:
Detailed and long sentences are used at this stage "Molly said my dress was pretty and she is going to ask her mummy to buy her one the same like mine". They can tell descriptive and imaginative stories to engage with other people. Sounds are normally pronounced correctly although they could have some difficulty with "th","r" and "v".


There are four main stages of spoken language: Babbling, the Holophrastic or one-word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. The babbling stage isn't as important as the other stages as this is where the child is experimenting with sounds, it is learning its surroundings and is attempting to imitate the noises around them. When the baby understands the concept of non verbal and verbal communication then it will move onto the next stage of language acquisition.

The Holophrastic/ one word stage:
In this stage nouns make up around 50% of the infants vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives make up the rest, it is made up of one word stages and utterances "play". Infants would use this stage to show that they need or want something although this might not be so obvious as it could be for attention. When they have learned to speak in one word sentences successfully then they will move onto the next stage.

The two word stage:
The two word stage is made up of two word sentences, single modifiers are also being used "that cat", along with questions "mummy eat?"

Telegraphic stage:
This stage contains three or four word sentences and is considered to be the most important stage in language development. This is sometimes the stage where the child learns the links between words and objects e.g "daddy playing with ball". At this stage of development a childs vocabulary will epand from 50 words to up to 13,000, the child will then start to learn how to join words, incorporate plurals and get a grip on tenses.





References:
Bowen, c (1998). (2014 (updated)). Ages and stages summary . Available: http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34:ages&catid=11:admin&Itemid=117. Last accessed 9th september 2015.

unknown?. (2015). Fetal Hearing . Available: http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-hearing/. Last accessed 9th september 2015.

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