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Form - Birth
Produces reflexive sounds: This means that the child creates sounds of both discomfort and vegetative sounds. Axl burps after feedings and cries when he is hungry. -
Period: to
Infant Age Language
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Content - 2 weeks
Startles in response to loud sound: This means the child responds to loud, unexpected sounds. Axl wakes up and cries when things are dropped in the nursery. -
Use - 1 month
Begins to attend to social partners: This means the child makes looks at and pays attention to social partners. Axl will look at his sister or parents when they talk to him. -
Content - 2 months
Mouths objects: This means that the child places objects in their mouth. Axl often will hold 4 toy and place it in his mouth. -
Use - 3 months
Aware of strangers and unfamiliar situations: This means that the child recognizes familiar communication partners and locations. Axl often looks at new people when the family takes trip to the grocery store. -
Form - 3 Months
Distinguishes own languages from nonnative language: This means that the child can hear the difference between English and other languages he may hear. When they go places, Axl tends to ignore sounds from nonEnglish speakers and prefers to listen to his parents and their English speaking communication partners. -
Form - 4 months
Produces vowel sounds and glides: This means that the child can produce isolated vowel sounds as well as elongated versions of the sounds. When Axl wants attention or is playing with his mom, he makes “eeeee” sounds and smiles. -
Use - 4 months
Recognizes own name: This means the child can hear their name and know it refers to themselves. When his family calls him, Axl will turn towards the sound. -
Content - 5 months
Attempts to imitate gestures: This means the child tries to recreate
gestures. -
Form - 7 months
Produces reduplicated babbling: This means the child can produce repeated consonant-vowel pairs. Axl likes to say “ba ba ba” when he
plays with his mom. -
Use - 7 months
Engages in joint attention: This means that the child is able to coordinate on an object with her social partner. Axl and his sister take turns playing with the spring doorstop and giggling. -
Form - 8 months
Produces non reduplicated babbling: This means the child can produce non-repeating consonant vowel pairs. Axl now says “ba da doo ma” when playing with his mom. -
Content - 8 months
Looks in correct place for objects out of sight: This means the child tries to find objects when they are hidden or not in the correct place. Axl knows his dad keeps his keys in his pocket and tries to find them to play with them. -
Use - 9 months
Engages in intentional communication: This means the child is now using specific vocalizations to communicate specific intentions to their social partners. Axl often says “ba ba” to mean his bottle when he is hungry. -
Content - 11 months
Produces first word: The child can produce a word with clear intention, that follows the adult pronunciation, and that the child can use consistently and in the correct situations. Axl calls the family cat a “cat”, and the kitten at his godparentʼs house a “cat”, he also calls his grandmotherʼs chihuahua “cat” but theyʼre rather similar and heʼs not completely wrong. -
Use - 11 months
This means that the child uses pointing to draw attention to specific objects. When the cat walks into the room, Axl points and says “cat!” So his family knows that there is a cat in their midst. -
Content - 12 months
Understands 7 words: The child can understand the meaning of seven different words produced by the adults around them. Axl knows bottle, cat, mommy, daddy, sissy, nana, and book, and will look in the direction of the referent if spoken to him. -
Form - 12 months
Produces Jargon: This means that the child can produce babbling that consists of at least 2 syllables and has two different consonants. Axl can now say “mah-bee” when he plays with his mom. -
Period: to
Toddler Age Language
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Form - 15 months
50% of all utterances consist of single nouns: This means that when the child speaks, 50% of their speech is single nouns. Axl often yells, “Milk! Milk! Milk!” 16 months: Pronounces about 25% of all words intelligibly: This means that of the words the child tries to use, 25% are intelligible. -
Use - 16 months
Uses verbal turn taking: this means the child allows other people to talk during conversation. Axl only uses a few words and mostly babbling, but he takes turns with his babbling when he plays with his mom. -
Form - 17 months
Uses negation: The child says no. Axl, like many toddlers, really enjoys yelling “NO!” whenever possible. -
Content - 17 months
Uses 5 words: The child can produce these words with clear intention, following adult pronunciation, and with consistent usage in correct situations. Axl often says cat, mommy, daddy, more, and no. -
Use - 19 months
Uses gesture-word combinations: This means the child will say a word and use gesture to go along with it. When Axl is hungry, heʼll say “foo!” And bring his hand up to his mouth to simulate eating. -
Form - 20 months
Has an MLU of approximately 1.62: This means that the child uses approximately 1.6 morphemes for every utterance. Axl is starting to use some two word sentences such as, “Want juice!” and mixes them in with his one word phrases -
Content - 20 months
Produces about 50 words: This means the child can produce words with clear intention, following adult pronunciation, and with consistent usage in correct situations. Axl often says many words, ranging from names of people in his life, colors, and more. -
Content - 22 months
Uses some verbs and adjectives: This means the child uses action words and descriptors. Axl can now tell his family when he “wants eat”, “jump jump jump!”, or “go fast!”. -
Form - 22 months
Asks questions with rising intonation: This means the child marks questions by raising their voice at the end in the same way adults do. Axl looked at his dad while they were at the store and asked, “Candy?” -
Form - 23 months
Starts to use grammatical morphemes: This means the child begins to change words to have tenses, such as -ing, or -ed. When asked what he did at his grandma's house, Axl replied “Played.” -
Form - 24 months
Is in Brownʼs Stage II: This means that the child uses two element sentences, typically noun-verb combinations. Axl likes dogs and when he sees them while out with his family, will say, “Look doggy!” -
Use - 25 months
Begins to use imaginative language: this means the child can now pretend and imagine things. Axl now pretends to be a superhero and “go fly” around the room. -
Content - 25 months
Comprehends about 500 words: This means the child understands around 500 words, however this doesnʼt mean that the child is capable of saying the words. -
Form - 26 months
Uses plural morpheme: This means the child knows to add -s to the end of words to denote multiple of an item. Axl now calls his two pet cats “cats” instead of “cat” -
Form - 28 months
Demonstrates phonological processes: This means the child makes errors in their speech in an effort to simplify their speech. Axl uses cluster reduction to ask for “ice keam”. -
Content - 28 months
Attends to sentence structure when interpreting new words: This means the child can learn new words simply by paying attention to sentence structure and knowing what kind of word to listen for. Axlʼs mom asked if he wanted the marshmallow, Axl had never had a marshmallow before but he already knew what everything else he could see was so he grabbed the puffy white cylinder. -
Form - 29 months
Uses present progressive morpheme with mastery: This means the child uses -ing consistently and correctly. Axl tells his family how much he likes “watching Otonaus (Octonauts)”. -
Form - 30 months
Is in Brownʼs Stage III: This means the child uses three element sentence and independent clauses. Axl enjoys being a superhero and tells his family, “I go jump!” -
Use - 30 months
Introduces and changes discussion topics: This means the child can come up with a topic they want to talk about and actually discuss it. Axl was working on naming colors with his mom, and when they finished he told her he was hungry. -
Content - 33 months
Produces 500 words: This means the child can produce these words with clear intention, following adult pronunciation, and with consistent usage in correct situations. Axl often says many new words, such as colors, characters, animals, food names, actions, and many more. -
Use - 34 months
Engages in short dialogues: This means the child will have short conversations. Axl often engages in dialogues with his dad about what they did during the day. -
Use - 35 months
Clarifies and asks for clarification during conversations: This means the child will repeat themselves or ask for help when they donʼt understand something during a conversation. Axl is very good at repeating himself when he says sandwich because his parents have trouble understanding the word. -
Content - 35 months
Asks simple questions: This means the child asks short questions to gather more information. Axl often asks his parents, “Can we have cake?” -
Form - 35 months
Supresses most common phonological processes: This means the child rarely tries to simplify their speech. Axl can now confidently say “Octonauts” without fronting the “c” sound. -
Form - 36 months
Begins to develop shallow phonological awareness abilities: This means the child is beginning to understand the sound structure of words. Axl can identify rhymes. -
Use - 36 months
Begins to engage in longer dialogues: Axl can now have conversations with his family without losing attention for a good 7 minutes. -
Period: to
Preschool Age Language
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Content - 37 months
Uses pronouns. When Axl talks about his favorite TV characters, he often calls the group “them”. -
Form - 37 months
Uses four to five words in sentences. Axl says sentences like “I really like blue.” -
Content - 39 months
Understands some relational terms: this means the child understands related but opposite terms, such as hard and soft. Axl will often turn the lamp in his room on and off very quickly while saying, “Light! Dark! Light Dark!” -
Form - 39 months
Uses compound sentences with “and”. Axl often says sentences like, “I like dogs and trains. -
Use - 39 months
Begins to use primitive narratives: Axl now tells short stories about characters, himself, and his pets. -
Form - 41 months
Continues to refine articulatory skills. Axl is working hard on making his consonants sound like the adult language models in his life. -
Form - 42 months
Uses adverbs of time: this means the child uses words that modify verbs to tell people when something happened. Axl likes to tell people he wakes up “early early” every day. -
Use - 42 months
Makes conversational repairs: This means the child attempts to fix misunderstandings in the conversation. When Axl has trouble pronouncing words in a way that is understandable, he often tries using related words to make his point apparent. -
Form - 44 months
Has mastered most consonants. Axl is able to use the majority of consonants in English. -
Content - 45 months
Uses syntactic information to narrow the possible meanings of new words: this means the child uses the part of speech (noun, verb, etc) to determine what a word they don’t know means. Axl wasn’t sure what scissors were, but the shiny things on the table were the only ones he didn’t recognize so he figured it out. -
Form - 45 months
Uses past tense consistently. Axl likes to talk about the things he did during the week at his preschool. -
Content - 47 months
Overextends new words on the basis of function. Axl’s dad told him that he uses a hammer to fix things, so next time his dad was fixing something, he called the screwdriver a hammer. -
Form - 47 months
Decreases use of phonological processes. As Axl is mastering consonants, he is no longer fronting his consonants or reducing consonant clusters. -
Use - 48 months
Constructs true narratives: Axl can now tell actual stories about himself and other characters. -
Form - 50 months
Combines four to seven words in sentences. Axl is now bringing together longer sentences when he talks to people. -
Content - 52 months
Uses “what do, what does, what did” questions. Axl likes asking his family what they did during the day. -
Use - 52 months
Uses indirect requests: this means the child essentially asks if someone is able to help them. instead of saying "Please get", Axl will now ask "Can you get this for me?" -
Form - 52 months
Has mastered almost all consonants however they may not be mastered in all contexts. Axl can say /c/ when in the initial phoneme position, however he has trouble when it’s in the final position. -
Form - 56 months
Knows the letters that make up their own name. Axl can recognize the letters A, X, and L. -
Content - 58 months
Uses deictic terms: this means the child uses theoretical terms such as this, that, here, and there. Axl’s mom asked where his blanket was, and he pointed to the couch saying, “There it is!” -
Use - 59 months
Uses narrative with a sequence of events but no main character or theme. Axl can tell stories but he can also simply say what happened during the day. -
Form - 5 years
Masters monophonemic rules for plural morphemes: This means the child can differentiate and correctly use the different sounds for plural words, such as /s/, /z/, and /Iz/. Axl confidently calls his dad’s collection of time tellers “watches” and his mom’s collection of wrist jewelry “bracelets”. -
Period: to
Early School Age Language
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Form - 5 years, 5 months
Produces some sentences in passive voice: this means the child creates sentence in the form of "Object + Verb + Subject". After finding his sister's birthday cake had been stolen and Grandma's chihuahua looking suspiciously and uncomfortably full and with pink frosting on its nose, Axl told his parents "The cake was eaten by the dog!" -
Content - 5 years, 7 months
"Learns to read" by decoding. When Axl reads at home with his parents, he points out the words like dog, cat, and, bird that he recognizes. -
Form - 5 years, 10 months
Can manipulate phonemes in words and blend and segment individual sounds. Axl and his class had a fun time during circle time singing the "Hannah Banana fo fana" song. -
Use - 5 years, 11 months
Uses mostly direct requests. Axl doesn't ask people "if they can help" him, he just asks for what he wants or needs. -
Form - 6 years, 6 months
Begins to use morphology to infer the meanings of new words. Axl wasn't sure what his mom meant when she said she had been "jogging" but he knew it was some sort of verb because of the -ing. -
Form - 6 years, 11 months
Uses elaborated noun phrases, adverbs, conjunctions, and some mental and linguistic verbs: this means the child uses new words to give more description to their language. The first time Axl told his mom what he wanted on his 3rd birthday cake, he said, "I want cake!" Now, for his 7th birthday he told her, "I want a blue cake with big, scary dinosaurs!" -
Form - 7 years, 2 months
Comprehends conjunctions such as because, so, if , but, or, before, after, and, then. Axl told his sister, "Before I liked blue, but now I like red." -
Form - 7 years, 7 months
Uses adult ordering of adjectives: this means the child now follows the generally accepted organization of adjectives, quantity, quality, size, age, shape, color, proper adjective, and purpose. Axl really enjoys the One-eyed, One-horned, flying purple people eater song. -
Content - 7 years, 9 months
Hones decoding skills to read unfamiliar words. Axl saw the word "library" and used the words he already knew to learn the new written version of the word. -
Form - 7 years, 10 months
Can produce all American English sounds and blends. Axl no longer has trouble saying any English sound, and can even say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. -
Form - 8 years, 1 month
Uses full passives: this means the child has use of all the tenses of passive sentences. Axl told his mom, "My homework was done!" when trying to avoid getting in trouble for getting a low grade in class because his homework was not done. -
Use - 8 years, 2 months
Produces narrative plots containing beginning, end, problem, and resolution. Axl had a fun time telling his 4 year old cousin about the strifes his stuffed toy, Dr. Wildebeest, had to go through to get through medical school and become the best doctor in the whole galaxy. -
Form - 8 years, 9 months
Uses derivational suffixes such as -er, -y, and -ly. Axl likes to tell his friends, "My mom's cookies are yummier than yours."