How To Understand The Linguistic Development Of Your Child

How to understand the linguistic development of your child

Children’s linguistic development usually passes through specific stages that are almost common among all children worldwide. It could be divided into 2 main periods: the prelinguistic period & linguistic period.

Table of contents:

1. Pre-linguistic period
2. Linguistic period
3. First words
4. The development of the first sentences
5. What to do to help the linguistic development of your children
6. References

1. Pre-linguistic period

It includes the first year of a child’s life. The child’s language behavior at this period is limited to some unclear pronunciations.

The child voices at this period — until the 10th month - don’t form an actual language by its known shape however, their language develops according to specific sequential stages and it seems to happen in the same sequence to all the children, with a difference in the speed of transition from one stage to another. The most prominent linguistic forms that develop in this period are crying, cooing, and babbling. Screaming also starts when a child is born and becomes the only method a newborn can use to connect with the outer world, however, Cooing appears between the third and fifth month in the form of one repeated syllable sound -woo, moo, doo-.

2. Linguistic period

The linguistic period starts at the end of the first year and it continues developing afterward.

One of the most prominent characteristics of this period is that the voices of cooing and babbling got replaced by words that have actual meaning. The first words consist of any sound and it is not a requirement that they resemble the sounds used by adults. They normally consist of assembling two voices, one static and the other vowel, like Ma, Ba, Ta…etc.

3. First Words

Children use their first words for a variety of purposes, they could refer to singular objects or whole sentences and these kinds of sentences are called “ HOLOPHRASEs”.

The first words for children consist of general nominals like milk, dog, car…etc. And it seems that children among different cultures tend to understand the words that refer to objects before the words that refer to actions and even when they understand the words that refer to actions they usually understand it in the context of talking about things or objects, for example, the child doesn’t understand the word ‘go’ separately but usually, he understand it if you put it in a sentence such as a dog go or went or I go to wherever.

It is also noted that children understand more words than they speak but if the opposite occurs, this may indicate difficulty receiving auditory and linguistic stimuli, which means that they are likely to have a problem with the efficiency of the sense of hearing which needs treatment before it worsens.

4. Development of the first sentences

What is more interesting to parents and scientists than the first words of children is their first sentences which refer to the ability of a child to gather singular words to form a meaningful sentence that allows him to communicate more efficiently and positively with the surrounding. it usually starts at the age of 18 months.

The first sentences are usually short and simple, containing only the important words disregarding any unneeded words such as prepositions and that is why it is called telegraphic speech, for example, if a 2-year-old boy wanted to say that he is playing with his dog, he just says play dog or dog play…etc.

It is also important to know that children’s language at this age is creative as they could depend on the little they know to form an enormous number of sentences but they also tend to overgeneralize the rules and apply them over other parts of the language which makes them fall into many linguistic errors. that usually happens to children between 3 & 5 years old.

When children reach the age of 5 or 6 years old, their language becomes a lot closer to that of adults but they still face some difficulties such as understanding and using passive sentences for example.

5. What to do to help the linguistic development of your children

1. Try to teach them new vocabulary and make sure they understand them correctly.
2. Provide them chances to practice and develop their reading and listening skills and teach them that good reading and listening include understanding and remembering.
3. Ask them to summarize something they read or listened to in their way in points or a short article.
4. Provide them a chance to speak and to write and give them feedback.
5. Teach them new vocabulary in a foreign language daily.

6. References

1. Educational Psychology Science [ Theory and practice], Prof. Adnan Youssef Atom, Prof. Shafiq Fallah Alawnah, Dr. Abdelnaser Ziab Algarah, Dr. Moawyah Mahmoud Abo Ghazal.