Children spend the first five years of their lives becoming experts in communication.
This involves the following six key areas:
- Understanding language
- Expressing thoughts and emotions Articulating speech sounds clearly
- Speaking fluently
- Voice quality
- Social skills
Communication development from birth to 12 months:
- responds when name is called
- listens when spoken to
- recognises words and names for familiar items and people
- uses gestures to communicate
- understands simple requests and commands
- learns to repeat sounds and experiments with early speech sounds
- by 12 months uses made up words (jargon) and begins to attempt first real words
- responds to simple questions with yes/no (including nodding or shaking head)
Communication development from 12 months to 2 years:
- comprehends around 300 words
- is aware of his/her environment and of daily routines
- follows 2-part commands
- has a range of vocabulary of at least 50 words
- begins to form two-word phrases
- enjoys listening to simple stories and rhymes
- use of jargon (made up words) decreases and mostly uses real words
- moves from solitary play to playing alongside another child
Communication development from 2 to 3 years:
- understands most things said to him/her
- understands basic location words including ‘on’ and ‘under’
- matches colours and shapes
- correctly answers simple questions
- rapid vocabulary growth: says about 250 words and understands about 700 words
- sentences are 3 to 4 words long
- begins to ask questions
- starts to play cooperatively in small groups
Communication development from 3 to 4 years:
- builds spoken vocabulary to about 900 words
- follows 2-part directions talks in 4 to 6 word sentences
- uses correct endings on words to represent different meanings e.g. two dogs, jumping, walked, Mum’s jumper
- asks questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why?
- uses a variety of speech sounds correctly (children may still have difficulty with sounds such as s, z, sh, ch, f, v, r, th)
- speech can be understood by familiar adults
Communication development from 4 to 5 years:
- follows 3-part directions
- understands complex story structures
- talks in longer sentences of 5 or more words
- uses most grammar correctly able to answer most question types
- uses words that show an emerging awareness of time and sequence e.g. yesterday, today, then, lunchtime, before, after
- explains feelings and ideas
- masters more difficult speech sounds (it is still acceptable to make errors when saying sh, ch, r, v, th)
- speech can be understood by strangers