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