Child Language Development Report

From birth through to adolescence, children progress through five main stages of growth and development. ‘Infancy’ covers between birth and one year old, ‘early years’ from one to three years, ‘childhood’ from four to seven years, ‘puberty’ from eight to twelve years and ‘adolescence’ between thirteen and sixteen years. Whereas growth is a measurable increase in the size and weight of a child’s body, development is the continual acquirement of skills and knowledge within all aspects of a child’s life. The main areas of development are social, physical, intellectual, language and emotional, and although children follow a similar pattern to progress and reach developmental milestones, the rate at which this occurs may differ between children

Progression furthermore sees the development of vocabulary and body language expressed by a child. Language development is divided into two key stages. The pre-linguistic stage covers children up to a year old when he/she begins to say their first words. The linguistic stage follows, which involves children using words with meaning and intent. The pre-linguistic stage observes infants simply crying to communicate, progressively cooing and responding to sounds and human voices. As they near the age of one, infants begin to turn their head towards sound, babble, giggle, visually respond to people and respond to their own name. It is thought that by one, they understand approximately twenty words in context and very simple messages or instructions. The early years sees the appearance of the first words, and in the first half of this stage children are expected to use 6/20 recognisable words, and to feel confident in joining in with repeated songs and rhymes they may of heard. They also begin to respond to the simple instructions they receive. The latter part of this stage sees children begin to link words together and use an increasing number of words, up to 200 by the age of two years. Telegraphic speech is a common occurrence whereby children use key words in a sentence, however miss out connecting words. By the end of the early years stage, children expand vocabulary and plurals, enjoy simple conversations and begin to expand vocabulary and use it in different ways such as counting. Imitation of adult speech occurs within the childhood stage, and pronunciation of words becomes significantly clearer. Sentences become grammatically correct, and a variety of worded questions begin to emerge as knowledge of words continues to expand. Although improvement in grammar occurs, tenses are still difficult for children within this