Children's speech development is like a journey with the same destination whatever language they are using, says Penny Tassoni - but success depends on their guides
The journey of how children learn language is a fascinating one. It is a two-part journey that follows more or less the same route regardless of the language that a child is being brought up in.
Packing suitcases
The first year of a baby's linguistic life could be compared to the packing stage of a journey. The baby collects up the skills that will be needed to communicate effectively. This stage is often referred to as the pre-linguistic stage. In this first year, no 'proper' words are likely to be spoken, but the baby will be learning how to make eye contact, draw the attention of the listener through intonation and to use facial expressions. As well as learning about the skills of communication, the baby 'tunes' into the language that is being used. By three months, babies can distinguish between their carer's and other voices, and by ten months babies are thought to understand about 15 words.
At the same time as tuning into the sounds of the language, babies spend their first year 'practising the tunes'. At first they coo, then at around six months they begin to babble. Gradually the babbling becomes more tuneful, and strings of repeated syllables are likely to be heard at around 11 months.
Learn the lingo
It is a myth that we should be talking to babies as if they were grown-ups. Analysis of mother's speech with their babies clearly shows that adults instinctively change their speech patterns by stressing and repeating key words in sentences. This has been dubbed 'motherese'. It appears to be vital as it focuses babies' attention on the important part of sentences. Our non-verbal behaviour also changes as we become more expressive and physically point out things to babies.
The way we interact with babies and young children has a deep effect on their language skills. Babies in particular need plenty of adult interaction and time. They need to make eye contact with us in pleasurable situations, for example being held and cuddled. It is worth remembering here that babies need to see happy faces smiling and talking to them, because as well as breaking into the code of spoken language, they will also be learning about non-verbal communication.
Traditional finger rhymes such as pat-a-cake, where physical contact is combined with repetition of sounds and eye contact, are also vital. Through such enjoyable contact, babies learn to take an active part in the communication process by smiling and laughing.
At around 12 months most babies are beginning to slip in 'words' among their babbles. It is likely that they are talking to us before we have realised it. First words tend to have more than one meaning for the babies as they use their new-found skills of intonation and pointing to differentiate between meanings.
From this point on babies build up more and more words, but somewhere between the ages of 18 and 24 months the pace of new words suddenly begins to increase so quickly it can be hard to keep track of them. This stage of language development has been referred to as the 'naming explosion'.
A phrase for it
Simple sentences begin with two or so words put together at around two years. The toddler appears to be good at working out the key words that are required for meaning and putting them together, for example. 'Mama come' or 'cat no drink'. Non-essential words such as 'the' and 'but' as well as plurals are missing in this stage, but later, as most children reach their third year, sentences begin to get longer and more grammatically accurate. At this point we can help children by listening to them and reflecting back their sentences in a more elaborate form - for example, 'so you enjoyed going to the park and feeding the ducks, did you?'
Fluent flow
The third year of life for most children marks the beginning of fluency. Their speech becomes more accurate, descriptive and, above all, intelligible to people other than family members and friends. For some children, however, their increased desire to speak can cause them to stutter as their thoughts tumble out quicker than their mouths can move. This is quite common and therefore not necessarily a sign that they are developing speech difficulties. We can help children in this period by allowing them plenty of time in which to speak and also by not directly correcting their speech.
The language journey continues with speech becoming important to children while they are playing with others. We see that children enjoy putting on voices in the home corner, organising their actions and using speech to express their needs. By the time most children are starting school, language has been mastered, although there will still be mispronunciations, grammatical errors and, of course, misunderstandings about what words mean. Children are now ready to begin taking a new journey - that of learning to read and write.