Children’s Spoken Language

Stages of Spoken Language Development

Cooing Stage (0-6 months): The first stage of a child’s language development involves basic sounds, typically vowel sounds such as “aah” or “ooh”. This is sometimes accompanied by consonants such as “g” or “k”.
Babbling Stage (6-12 months): At this stage, children experiment with more complex combinations of sounds, repeating it in a babble as they explore the phonetic range of language.
One-Word Stage (12-18 months): The child begins to grasp semantic power, speaking single words with meaning, often overgeneralising terms.
Two-Word Stage (18-24 months): Children start to link words to convey more complex command.
Telegraphic Stage (24-36 months): At this stage, a child will start to construct simple sentences but often leave out inessential words.
Multi-word Stage (beyond 36 months): Children use more complex sentences as they learn to negotiate syntax more confidently.

Key Features in Spoken Language Development

Holophrastic stage: This represents the one-word stage where single words are used to express complete ideas.
Overextension: Children apply a term broadly to objects that share similar features e.g. calling all four-legged animals “dog”.
Underextension: The opposite of overextension - where children use a general term to refer to a specific object.
Reduplication: Children repeat a whole syllable e.g. ‘dada’.
Deletion: Missing out the last consonant in words.
Substitution: Substituting one sound for another, usually in difficult words.
Fis phenomenon: Where a child can understand a word but cannot pronounce it accurately.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Behaviourist Theory (B.F. Skinner): This theory posits that children learn language through imitation, reinforcement and correction.
Innate Theory (Noam Chomsky): According to Chomsky, children are born with an innate ability to learn language, made possible through a hypothetical ‘Language Acquisition Device’ (LAD).
Social Interactionist Theory (Lev Vygotsky): This theory advocates that children learn language through social interaction, influenced by factors such as caregivers’ speech.
Cognitive Theory (Jean Piaget): Piaget proposed that children learn language as they develop cognitively, i.e., they need to understand a concept before they can talk about it.

Remember, it’s important not only to know these stages, features, and theories, but also develop an understanding of whether they work universally or are culturally or socially bound.