Early Language Milestones
Language development can be broken up into two categories, receptive language which refers to the understanding of language and expressive language which refers to the production of language. The below information lists the typical age that children develop language skills.
0 – 6 months
Most children:
- Begin to recognise and turn towards the sound of speech and familiar voices.
- Begin to vocalise and make cooing sounds e.g. ‘ooh’ ‘ahh’.
6 - 12 months
Most children:
- Begin babbling and experimenting with vocalisations e.g. ‘dada’ ‘baba’.
- Imitate actions, wave, clap on cue.
- Use vocalisations to obtain attention and make environmental sounds e.g. ‘brum’ for a car.
- Recognise and respond to their name.
- Understand some simple, familiar words e.g. ‘go’ ‘mum’ and requests ‘ta’.
1 - 2 Years
Most children:
- Begin to use first words e.g. ‘mum’ ‘car’ ‘gone’ ‘more’.
- Identify and point to objects on request.
- Begin to use two words together e.g. ‘big car’ ‘dad go’.
- Understand basic questions and directions e.g. ‘where’s your nose?’
- Have a developing vocabulary by 2 years.
2 - 3 Years
Most children:
- Start to use 3-5 word sentences.
- Understand one to two-step instructions e.g. ‘get your shoes and bring them here’.
- Begin to understand and use concepts e.g. ‘in’ ‘out’ ‘big’.
- Significant increase in vocabulary and ability to name most common objects.
3 – 4 Years
Most children:
- Use correct sentence structure and the meaning is clear to listeners.
- Use a range of grammatical structures including past tense, plural and pronouns.
- Likes to ask lots of questions especially ‘why’ questions.
SCHOOL AGED LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Children achieve language milestones at different ages. By the time they reach school age, children are capable of producing and understanding quite complex language. The below information lists the typical age that children develop language skills.
4 - 6 Years
Most children will:
- use longer sentences (around 8 words) and this will continue to increase and expand.
- start to use a range of word forms, including:
- ‘-ing’ words e.g. ‘I am running in the race’.
- Pronouns e.g. ‘I am happy, she is happy, it is her turn’.
- Regular past tense e.g. ‘jumped’ and irregular past tense verbs ‘ran’.
- Regular Plurals e.g. apples, and irregular Plurals e.g. ‘mice’.
- respond to simple wh-questions e.g. ‘who, what, where’.
- start to recount their day and tell stories about their experiences.
- start to understand multi-step directions e.g. 2 or more parts.
- start to understand a range of concepts including position, quantity and sequence concepts.
- sit and complete a task with minimal assistance.
- understand negatives e.g. ‘no, not, can’t’.
- progress with turn taking, sharing and waiting.
- continue to develop their speech and language skills once they get to school.
6 Years +
Most children will:
- continue to develop and expand their vocabulary.
- increase sentence length and begin to use conjunctions (joining words) e.g. ‘and, because’. These words help them to give explanations.
- continue to understand more wh- questions e.g. ‘why’. They begin to inference and can answer questions about feelings e.g. ‘how are you feeling?’ ‘Why do you feel this way?’
- begin to learn abstract language e.g. when we say ‘it’s cold outside’- they may be prompted to put on a jacket.