Stages of language acquisition in children

1) Basic Biological Noise (0-8 weeks.) Non-conscious responses; manly reflexive noises. Child starts with vowel ‘A’ sounds.

 

2) Cooing & Laughing Stage (8-20 weeks) Recognise parents face and speech, they recognise that language has a structure. Learn to express themselves through laughing and ‘chuckling’. Start to string ‘cooing’ noises together.

 

3) Vocal Play (20-30 weeks) Able to adjust pitch. Begin to use consonant and vowel sounds.

 

4) BABBLING STAGE (25-50 weeks) 2 types of babbling sounds-

Re-duplicating - repeat sounds (e.g. woof woof)

Variegated- use different sound patterns and put them together. The words have no meaning to the child as they think they are just making sounds.

5) Melodic Utterance Stage (10-13 months) Variation and rhythm is shown.

(12-18 MONTHS)

Developments occur rapidly, intonations used to show purpose or feelings. Children begin to develop at different stages. Single word utterances: concrete nouns. Child learns 10-20 words each month.

 

(AGE 18-24 MONTHS)

Have a vocabulary of 200 words – shows how quickly they are learning.

Pronunciation - some syllables dropped (e.g. tomato = mato)

Consonant clusters avoided i.e. sky - guy

Re-duplicate sounds- e.g. baby = baybay

no consistency of speaking