What should my child be saying, and when?

Age

Language Skills

Speech Production Skills

Birth to 6 months

• Localizes to sound; listens to speech

• Recognizes different voices

• Smiles when spoken to

• Social smiles

• Makes vegetative sounds

• Cooing, laughing, raspberries

• Vocalize vowel sounds

• Emergence of consonants, CV structures

• Repeats sounds

6 to 12 months

• Understands familiar words (e.g., "Juice")

• Identifies a few body parts (1-3)

• Can respond to simple request or questions (e.g., "All done?")

• Develops early vocabulary for 1-3 words. 

• Imitates actions

• Interest in cause and effect toys. 

• Babbling begins
  o    First, “reduplicated” or
        “canonical” babbling
        (e.g.,“dadada”)
  
  o    Then, “variegated” babbling using
        a variety of consonants and
        vowel combinations (e.g.,
        “badaditah”).
   

• Intonation patterns emerge

• Reciprocal sound imitation

• Produces mostly unintelligible utterances.

12 to 18 months

• Understands words as part of a routine.

• Understands and follows simple commands.

• Identifies additional body parts.

• First 50 words emerge.
  o    Children are using language to
        request ,comment, reject
  o    Seeks interactions with adults
  o    Shows interest in peers
   

• By 18 months, children are expressing single word semantic roles.  For example, “Mama!,” “Ball!”

• Many words are approximations of adult forms.  Children may omit final sounds of words (e.g., "ha" for "hat”). 

• A multitude of sounds errors are common.

24 months

• Understands and follows simple single step directions (e.g., “Put your shoes on.”)

• Answers simple “

• “WH”-questions

• A “language burst” occurs (between 18-24 months)!  Vocabulary expands to 200+ words by 24 months.

• Begins to combine 2 words together to express wants, needs and observations about their immediate environment.  Language is telegraphic.  They are not yet using grammatical sentences.  For example, “Ball go!,” “Mama shoe”

• Interacts with adults

• Requests information

• Answers questions

• Acknowledges

• Engages in interactive play with adults

• Parallel play emerges

• Can participate in small group activities with adult support

• At 2 years old = 50 % intelligible

• By 2 years old, most kids can produce: p,b,m,h,n,w,t,d

• Use of CV, VC, CVC, CVCV syllable structures emerges

• Simplifications of adult word forms is very common

24-36 months

• Understands and follows 2 step directions

• Comprehends some wh-questions (what is that?, Where?)

• Demonstrates understanding of:  

• Concepts: in, on, off, under, out of, together, away from

• qualities: soft/hard, heavy/light

• Expressive vocabulary of 200-300 words.

• Complexity of sentences increases

• Emergence of grammatical sentences

• Present progressive (“-ing”)

• Prepositions (e.g., “off,” “in,” “out”)

• Plurals (e.g., “books”)

• Negatives ( e.g., “no,” “not,” “can’t”)

• Copula (“to be”) used inconsistently

• Early subject pronouns (“I,” “you,” “it”) then, “he,” “she,” “they.”

• At 3 years old= 75% intelligible

• Omits middle sounds of longer words.

3-4 years

• Vocabulary expands to 500-1000 words.

• Understands and answers additional “Wh”-questions (what?, where? who?)

• Demonstrates understanding of:  

• Concepts: up, top, around, apart, toward, in front of, high, in back, next to (3 ½ -4 years old)

• Qualities: fast/slow, same/different, etc.

• Comprehends and follow multi-step directions

• Complex sentence forms emerge; 4-5 word sentences.

• Uses a variety of grammatical forms and sounds more adult-like.

• Copula and auxiliary verbs (“Be verbs” e.g.,  am, is , are)

• Irregular Past Tense ( e.g., went)

• Articles (e.g., a, the)

• Possessives (e.g., daddy’s)

• Auxiliary verbs in questions (e.g., Can I?, Will you?)

• Conjoining sentences (and, because)

• Talks about past events; re-tells 2 related events.

• Can produce most sounds.

• Uses all initial and final consonants in words.

• May make sound substitutions

• By 4 years old, most kids can produce: k,g,f,v,y

4-5 years

• Comprehends stories with fewer pictures; Understands and can answer wh-questions pertaining to a story.

• Understands “when?” and “why?”

• Demonstrates understanding of:  

• Concepts: besides, bottom, backward, forward, down, low, between, inside, above, below (4- 4 ½ years old)

• Qualities: rough/smooth, bigger/smaller, etc.

• Sentence forms used consistently; Uses adult-like forms

• Uses Be verbs, past tense, third person plurals

• Uses conjunctions which are temporal (when….) and causal (so, because…)

• Asks how? and why? questions

• Predicts, reasons, problem solves.

• Narratives develop – HEAP; tells about past events in a sequence.

• Letter names, sound correspondences emerge

• Phonological awareness

• At 5 years old= 100% intelligible

• May continue to make errors for later developing sounds( such as  r, s,z, th)