Stages of Language Acquisition
Pre-verbal Stage (birth to 11 months)
During the pre-verbal stage children are not yet producing words but they are gaining important aspects of their first language. These aspects include the development of the 'eye gazing norm' and 'turn taking norm', as well as body language and the recognition of their curtain intonation patterns in their first language.
Soundless communication:
Children are not yet producing sounds, but they are acquiring important aspects of their first language. Testing shows that young babies tend to suck faster on their dummies when they are interested in a particular stimulus. This proves that babies are already beginning to recognize and show a preference for the sound and intonation patterns of their first language in contrast to those of other languages.
Turning eyes and taking turns:
The Eye gaze norm refers to the level of eye contact that is normal when talking to others in a particular culture. The length of time between re-establishing eye-contact, and intensity of the eye-contact each time, vary widely between cultures and is a learnt part of a child's acquisition. Turn taking norms refers to what the accepted conventions are for a speaker to establish their turn in a conversation. For example in some cultures, it is considered perfectly reasonable to shout over the top of another while in cultures such as Anglo-Australian culture, politeness dictates that the hearer should wait for a pause in the conversation before jumping in with their own contribution. Parents tend to model these conversations norms by playing both roles until the children are able to start making contributions themselves. In doing so, children are given the message that a conversation has multiple participants and that they are expected to contribute or 'take their turn' as one of these participants.
Body language:
Body language may include, pulling a parents sleeve, pointing at something, stamping their feet, screwing up their faces or grabbing at a object.
Talking Sounds:
From seven months on-wards children begin to babble (begin to make speech like sounds). Early in babbling, children make a wide veriaty of sounds found in languages of the world, regardless of the language spoken by their parents.
Soundless communication:
Children are not yet producing sounds, but they are acquiring important aspects of their first language. Testing shows that young babies tend to suck faster on their dummies when they are interested in a particular stimulus. This proves that babies are already beginning to recognize and show a preference for the sound and intonation patterns of their first language in contrast to those of other languages.
Turning eyes and taking turns:
The Eye gaze norm refers to the level of eye contact that is normal when talking to others in a particular culture. The length of time between re-establishing eye-contact, and intensity of the eye-contact each time, vary widely between cultures and is a learnt part of a child's acquisition. Turn taking norms refers to what the accepted conventions are for a speaker to establish their turn in a conversation. For example in some cultures, it is considered perfectly reasonable to shout over the top of another while in cultures such as Anglo-Australian culture, politeness dictates that the hearer should wait for a pause in the conversation before jumping in with their own contribution. Parents tend to model these conversations norms by playing both roles until the children are able to start making contributions themselves. In doing so, children are given the message that a conversation has multiple participants and that they are expected to contribute or 'take their turn' as one of these participants.
Body language:
Body language may include, pulling a parents sleeve, pointing at something, stamping their feet, screwing up their faces or grabbing at a object.
Talking Sounds:
From seven months on-wards children begin to babble (begin to make speech like sounds). Early in babbling, children make a wide veriaty of sounds found in languages of the world, regardless of the language spoken by their parents.
One-word or Holophrastic Stage (11 to 18 months)
Towards the end of their first year, children produce a small number of isolated single words. Such words may include: mama, dada, up, teddy, kitty, doggie and bye-bye. They extend their ability to communicate quite considerably.
Two-words or Telegraphic Stage (1.5 to 2.5 years)
As their vocabulary reaches roughly around the 50 word mark, their lexical acquisition typically takes a sudden leap forward. The two-word utterances that they produce are highly abbreviated and lack may of smaller grammatical words and ending of english, such as the '-s plural' and the '-s possessive . This is called the telegraphic stage because it resembles the language used in telegrams. Such utterances include: mummy juice, hi kitty, daddy eat, bad doggie and eat lunch. The utterances can mean a number of things (very ambiguous).
Multi-word Stage (2.5 years onwards)
This stage occurs when the childs utterance length increases.