Child Spoken Development

• What are the 10 stages of language development


  1. Instinctive biological noises
  2. Cooing and vocal play
  3. Babbling
  4. Melodic utterances
  5. Protowords
  6. The first word
  7. The holophrastic stage
  8. The two-word stage
  9. The telegraphic stafe
  10. The post-telegraphic stage
• What characterises stage 1/instinctive biological noises stage? (0-6 weeks)


  • These are noises which the baby does out of instinct rather than being in control, usually in the form of crying.
• What characterises stage 2/ cooing and vocal play? (7 weeks)


  • The child starts to produce long vowel sounds, but these do not mean anything.The child starts putting sounds together (just playing) - this is called vocal play.
• What characterises stage 3/ babbling? (6 months)


  • The child starts reduplicated babbling - this is where the same syllable is repeated, getted praised for this. The child starts to move on from that to mixing syllables. For example, 'damaba'. This is called variegated babbling. The child starts to produce lots of phonemes - this is called phonemic expansion.The child starts to use only the phonemes in their language - this to called phonemic contraction.
• Melodic utterances (from 9 months onwards) 


  The child starts to use intonation. The child starts to experiment with rhythm and tone.
• Protowords

  The child starts to assign sounds to objects. These objects then become known as this. For example, 'pap' for the dog.
• The first word The child finally produces their first fully formed word. Their parents get very excited and they produce that word over and over again. Common first words are dad, mum, cat, dog, teddy, baby and no. The holophrastic stage begins.