Language Development in Children

Stages of Language Development in Children

• Crying is an indication of language ability and is the first form of language.

Stage 1: 0-2 months

• Infants start cooing, producing vowel-like sounds (mainly a, o sounds).

Stage 2: 3-6 months

• Infants start babbling, adding consonants to sounds (mainly a, o, e vowels and b, m, d, t consonants).

End of First Year

• Infants develop a link between communication and sound-making signals, marking the onset of language.

Stage 3: Beginning of 2nd year

• One-word utterances emerge (e.g., Ma, ba, da, bab bab bab).
• Infants develop a vocabulary of about 5 words.

Stage 4: 18 months

• Vocabulary explosion/spurt: learning words at a faster rate (20-50 words).
• Overgeneralizations occur (e.g., baba for all men, mama for all women).

Stage 5: Just before end of 2nd year and beginning of 3rd year

• Two-word utterances emerge (e.g., dad go, mamy milk, go sleep).
• Telegraphic speech (abbreviated language) is used.
• Overgeneralizations continue (e.g., mama halawa, sakr bab).
• Limited inflections and use of here-and-now environment are observed.

Stage 6: Third year to beginning of 4th year

• Complete utterances are used.
• Some conversational skills develop.
• Wider here-and-now skills are observed.
• Metalinguistic awareness emerges (e.g., bad words).
• More vocabulary items are learned.

Stage 7: 5-6 years

• The child possesses basic syntactic, semantic, phonological, and phonetic systems of L1.
• Adult-like fluency and good mastery of L1 knowledge are achieved.
• Conversational skills similar to those of adults are developed.
• Deeper and wider metalinguistic awareness is observed.

Stage 8: 7-13 years

• Development of more complex, adult-like conversational skills occurs.
• More advanced and complex grammar and knowledge of L1 are developed.