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Period: to
Lifespan of Language Development
Lifespan of Language Development -
3 Months Old
At 3 months old, a baby is able to respond vocally and with facial expression to another person (Owens, p 106, Table 5.1 & para 2). -
8 Months Old
At 8 months old, a baby will begin to gesture to communicate their needs; they have developed "intentionality in their interactions primarily through gestures" (Owens, et al... 2011, p 107, para 2). -
12 Months Old
The one year old baby begins to speak, using words instead of gestures to communicate their needs. -
18 months old
The 18 month old toddler now has a vocabulary of approximately 60 words and can combine words togetherusing word order rules (Owens, et al... 2011, p 108, para 2). -
2 Years Old
The two year old toddler has a vocabulary of 150 to 300 words and can make new word-referent associations with as few as three exposures (Owens, 2011, p 109, para 1). -
3 Years Old
Three year old toddlers now use a “more adult-like sentence structure… most children’s utterances contain both a subject and a verb” (Owens, et al… 2011, p 106, Table 5.1 & p 112, para 5). -
4 Years Old
The four year old can now change the style of their speech to fit the listener are joining two or more independent clauses together to form compound sentences” (Owens, et al…2011, p 106, Table 5.1, & p 112, para 8). -
5 Years Old
At age five, the child has learned 90% of their language and average “five year olds use very adult like language form, although many of the more subtle syntactic structures are missing” (Owens, et al…2011, p 106, Table 5.1 & p 114, para 1). -
6 Years Old
The six year old is beginning to “learn visual mode of communication with writing and reading” (Owens, et al.. 2011, p 106, Table 5.1). -
11-18 Teen Years
Teenagers become more effective conversationalists able to discuss topics with skills such as taking turns, interrupting, asking relevant questions to the conversation, understanding multiple word meanings and figurative language, genderlect, and telling narratives using details in sequential order (Owens, et al…2011, p 106, Table 5.1 and p 114, para 2-3). -
18 Years Old- Adulthood
Adult language development continues to change and grow as the adult’s life changes with work, education, interests, and life experiences as long as the physical health does not cause any impairments (Owens, et al… 2011, p 115, para 115).