Language Development

Important aspect of language development is relationship between thinking, speaking, reading and writing.
Children seem to develop language while developing cognitive abilities.
They look for patterns and invent rules to put pieces together

Birth to 1 year

• crying and cooing
• near 4 months, begin babbling, producing vowel and consonant sounds
• social interaction important, infants babble in response to adults who speak to them
• 9-10 months- echolalic babbling, imitating sounds other make
• at this point babies who are deaf are often silent
• 9-18 months- utter first word, they say "mama" when they need something
• first words typically labels for objects and actions
• holophrasic stage- speak only one word 'sentences' but can use intonation to convey meaning
• during first year, vocab increases tremendously

2-3 years

• near 2nd year, 2-word stage
• then telegraphic speech- understandable but words are missing
• essential content words (nouns and verbs) are used, articles and pronouns omitted.
• overgeneralisation: after learning "ed" for past tense, will say "Daddy go-ed" instead of "Daddy went"
• overgeneralisation: "s" for plural, will say mouses instead of mice
• overgeneralisation: all men "daddy', all 4 legged animal "doggy"
• 2-3 year: child ask questions
• like to hear themselves, demonstrate echolalia, repeating what is heard
• 3rd year: mean length of utterance - 4-5 words
• vocab 900 words
• tell stories , express how they feel
• mastered consonants p, b, m, w, h and all vowels

4-5 years

• can tell lengthy stories
• vocab 1500 words
• make grammatical errors which disappear with increased practice
• stopping child to correct errors only slows the child down, may introduce frustration
• if child uses word incorrectly, try repeating with the correct word, don't make correction obvious
  eg she says "I helded the doll"... you may repeat "You held the doll? You like to hold the doll, don't you?"
• language experience programs: stimulate discussion, have child tell story, record on paper what child said. Later child reads and writes the story. This teaches child that what can be said can also be written, read, and that all the information can be communicated to other people.
• age 5, vocab: 2200 words, count to 10, name objects, state name, age
• sounds mastered by 4 1/2: t, d, n, g, k , y, ng

6-7 years

• 5 1/2 - 6 1/2 years: use all basic rules of grammar- plurals, possessive, verb tense
• vocab: 8000 - 14,000 words
• speech sounds by 6 1/2: sh, zh, l, th, j
• speech sounds by 7 1/2: s, a, r, wh
• girls mastered all speech sounds by age 7
• boys by age 8