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From birth to age 3
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". -
Between three and six months
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. -
Between six and nine months
Six to 12 months is a crucial age for receptive language development. -
Between nine and 12 months
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 -
By the age of 12 months, most children use "mama/dada" appropriately
During the second year of life language development proceeds at very different rates in different children. -
At 18 to 24 months of age
Toddlers come to understand that there are words for everything and their language development gains momentum. -
Between the ages of two and three
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. -
Six-year-olds
Usually can correct their own grammar and mispronunciations. -
Adolescents
Generally speak in an adult manner, gaining language maturity throughout high school -
Between 12 and 15 months
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
