SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
It is important to keep in mind that children develop speech and language at their own unique rate. The following information serves only as a general guideline as to when children typically develop these skills.
Birth to 3 months:
- Startles to loud or sudden noise
- Cries differently for hunger, discomfort, or pain
- Quiets to a friendly, familiar voice
- Gives direct attention to speaker and may smile
- Begins to vocalize to show pleasure (ex. cooing; single vowels)
4 to 6 months:
- Responds to changes in tone of a voice
- Babbles or repeats a string of sounds (ex. “ma – ma – ma”)
- Increases use of consonant sounds such as /p/, /b/, /m/
- Vocalizes pleasure/displeasure through different sounds
- Laughs during play with people and objects
7 to 12 months:
- Begins to respond to requests such as “wave bye-bye” and “come here”
- Seems to recognize words for common objects
- Plays gesture games such as “pat-a-cake”, “so big”, and “peek-a-boo”
- Uses most vowel and consonant sounds in vocal play
- Has one or two words such as “mama” and “dada”
1 to 2 years:
- Understands new words every week
- Follows simple directions
- Points to pictures and some body parts when asked
- Begins to use 2 word combinations such as “all gone” and “more juice”
- Uses consonant sounds /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /h/, /t/, /d/ and /n/ frequently
2 to 3 years:
- Understands all sentence types
- Uses a vocabulary of 200-300 words (900 words by 3 years)
- Uses short, simple sentences
- May display stuttering-like behaviors, such as repetitions of sounds and words
- Carries on purposeful conversations
3 to 4 years:
- Understands and answers simple questions
- Follows 2-3 step directions
- Uses a vocabulary of 900-1500 words
- Uses sentences containing 4 or more words
- Speech is understood by those outside of the family
4 to 5 years:
- Understands all types of questions
- Attends to and takes turn in conversations
- Uses a vocabulary of 2000 words or more
- Uses basic adult sentence types
- May have some speech sound errors, but is easy to understand
www.asha.org/public/speech/development/BilingualChildren.htm addresses issues such as "How Can I Teach My Child to Be Bilingual" and "Will Using Two Languages Cause Speech-Language Problems?".
Young children often do not (and are not expected to) pronounce all speech sounds correctly. Sounds are learned in a developmental sequence and come with time, as well as with talking experience. Below is a chart of when speech sounds are typically acquired:
3 years: p, b, m, n,
h, w, t, d, k, g, f, y, ing
4 years: l, sh, ch, j, v
5 years: r, voiced th
6 years: s, z, voiceless
th
7 years: vocalic r (i.e.
bird, ear)
*All sounds should be produced correctly by 8 years of age.
Below is a guideline for how well a child’s speech should be understood:
18 months: 25-50%
24 months: 50-75%
36 months: 75-90%
48 months: 90-100%
*A child should be 100% intelligible by 4 years of age, even with speech sound
errors.
If you suspect that your child may have a delay, seek the advice of a
speech/language pathologist in your area. Babies and toddlers are never
too young for an evaluation. Check out http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/chart.htm
for more information about speech and language development and other issues.
NORMAL SPEECH/LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT SIX YEARS AND BEYOND
As children mature, their speech and language skills also mature. Their vocabulary increases, their sentences become longer and more complex, and they are able to converse at a fairly adult level. They have the ability to take turns, close or change topics, and adjust their language to meet the communication partner’s needs. They also know and use social amenities, such as ‘please’ and ‘excuse me’.
They enter school and learn about sounds, that sounds make up words, and that words make up sentences. They can break sentences into words and words into syllables. They can break words into sounds and put the sounds back together again. They learn to read. They also improve their ability to retell stories and know that there is a beginning, middle and end. They can retell stories and events in sequence.
By age seven, children understand and use many basic concepts, such as prepositional concepts (over, under, beside, next to), time concepts (today, tomorrow, yesterday), size (large, small, medium sized), and causality (if, then, next). They learn about verb forms and plurals, possessives, nouns and describing words (adjectives).
Between the ages of 7 and 11, their language continues to mature and be refined. They can use language for humor and can understand riddles, idioms, and proverbs. They know and use multiple meaning words. They know about words through the location, function, origin, class, and many other attributes. Their language influences their reading abilities in many important ways. If vocabulary is limited, their reading comprehension may well be affected. Phonological skills also have a direct impact upon decoding (sounding out words) as well as spelling. Their ability to write complete, correct sentences may be impacted. All areas of language affect their performance in the classroom on a daily basis.
