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The brain is developing and maturing and is the most precocious period for speech and language skills development. Most infants acquire the following abilities; recognize their mother's voice, make sounds indicating pleasure and make vowel-like sounds such as "ooh" and "ah".
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Most infants can do the following:
Turn their head toward a speaker, watch a speaker's mouth movements. Social interaction determines which language they eventually learn. -
Six to 12 months is a crucial age for receptive language development.
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Babies may begin to do the following:
• listen when spoken to, listen intently to speech and other sounds
• recognize words for common objects and names of family members
• respond to simple requests -
During the second year of life language development proceeds at very different rates in different children.
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Toddlers come to understand that there are words for everything and their language development gains momentum.
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it is estimated that children add nine new words per day.
Children constantly produce sentences that they have not heard before, creating rather than imitating.
Language skills usually blossom between four and five years of age. -
Usually can correct their own grammar and mispronunciations.
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Generally speak in an adult manner, gaining language maturity throughout high school
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Children begin to do the following:
• use four to six intelligible words, usually those starting with "b," "c," "d," and "g," although less than 20 percent of their language is comprehensible to outsiders