Year one:
The first year sees babies working on speech sounds.
By the time they are six months old they are making the characteristic burbling
sounds we associate with ‘baby talk'. The first year can be roughly divided up
into the stages: crying, cooing and babbling. Click the stages in the timeline
to find out more.
Crying:
The first sound a human baby makes is to cry. Often
known as vegetative noises, this is the only way it can express pain, pleasure
or hunger. It is an instinctive noise and is therefore not considered a
language.
Cooing:
A baby's brain development is in front of its body
development and it therefore has to exercise the 100 different pairs of muscles
it takes to produce speech sound. Cooing (or gurgling) is a sound development
that occurs at around six to eight weeks old. Babies experiment with ‘coo',
‘goo' and ‘ga' and gradually gain more and more control over their speech
organs (or vocal cords).
Babbling:
Babbling begins at six to nine months old. It is not
learned or copied but pre-programmed. The work-out of the vocal cords means
babies repeat syllables over and over. Combinations of vowels and consonants,
such as ‘ma', ‘pa', ‘da', are produced and repeated and therefore ‘mama' and
‘dada', known as reduplicated monosyllables, often sound like adult language,
and proud parents believe it is baby's first word.
Year two:
The second year of development sees an increase in
the ability to manipulate speech sounds and more of a shaping of sound into
familiar pronunciations. The second year can be roughly divided up into the
stages ‘one-word', ‘two-word' and ‘telegraphic'. Click the stages in the
timeline to find out more.
One-word:
At this stage, children begin to concentrate on
building phonemes into words, beginning largely with nouns, that reflect their
needs and interests. Often words for objects a child encounters everyday are
the first. Basically, they build a personal vocabulary to deal with their
world. Single words convey more than one meaning - “milk!” may mean “I want
some milk.” or “I've spilt some milk.” Words used in this way are called
holophrases. They substitute a complex grammar.
Two-word:
This stage, during which the major speech pattern is
of two-word utterances, happens around 18-24 months old. This is particularly
significant because here young children are demonstrating an understanding of
the rules that govern how we communicate meaningfully. An example of a two-word
utterance might be “Daddy ball!” which could mean a variety of things including
“Daddy get the ball”, “That's Daddy's ball” and “Daddy throw the ball”.
Telegraphic:
A few months after the two-word stage (age varying
from child to child) comes what is known as telegraphic stage. Children begin
to utter increasingly complex multi-word sentences and grammatical words and
endings are also present. This speech is considered to be ‘telegraphic' or like
a ‘telegram' in that it includes all the important function words, leaves out
‘little' words like conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions.
Year three:
By year three, children are effective language
users: still needing to practice, still needing to develop additional lexis,
but fundamentally with the building blocks for all future language use. At this
stage they begin to crack the code of implied meaning: to understand that,
sometimes, language contains messages which can seem to contradict their face
value statements.
Year four:
Children are sophisticated language users by year
four. They understand that language carries a multiplicity of meanings, that it
can be manipulated and that different audiences require different language use
including variations in lexis and intonation. In other words, by year four,
their use of language is purposeful.
Year five:
A critical factor in year five is that it is the age
that most children start school. So here we see a shift from spoken language as
the complete focus to written language: learning to read. This shift towards
literacy sees children beginning to make links between print and meaning.
No comments:
Post a Comment