Language Development
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Milestones of Language Development
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Language development is a remarkable thing. Children must learn words and their meanings, how to combine words to make understandable sentences, and how to use words and sentences to communicate with other people. In order to accomplish so much in a short time, the process of language development starts before children actually say their first words. Children are unique indiviudals who develop faster or slower than the average.
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-One year-old children should be able to understand a variety of words and should be using a few single words.
-By age two, words should be combined into two and three word phrases and sentences.
-By age three, children should be speaking in 3 to 4 word sentences and displaying intelligible speech to people outside the family.
-By age four, children should be able to speak in 4 to 5 word sentences, answer basic "wh" questions, and follow simple two-step directions
-By age five, children start using complex sentence structures, pronounce most sounds correctly, talk about past and future events, and answer questions about stories.
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How Can I Help?
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| SMILING IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE |
Parents can help improve children's language abilities by modeling more mature language, expanding upon children's comments, and using "self" and "parallel" talk throughout the day (i.e. talking about what you or your child is doing during the activity).
Reading to your child is also a great way to help your child's language development. Try these suggesions to help expand vocabulary, organize language, and predict the rest of the story.
-Vocabulary: Ask you child to name pictues in the book; talk about words your child does not know.
-Organization: Ask your child to retell a story. This can help your child express thoughts in a logical order. Give clues to help with the order of the story. Say, for example, "First,.", "In the middle of the story ..", and "The story ends when ...".
-Prediction: After reading part of a story, ask your child, "What do you think will happen next?"
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