CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION | TEC
Talking is a natural phenomenon during the maturity period of a child and it is quickly learned with or without formal teaching. But learning a language can only be acquired through interaction between the child and his parents or guardians. Below are the 3 basic stages for child language development skills:
Stage One: Learning Sounds
A newborn baby can make and hear the sounds of any language. The first language he will utter is the sound of crying. At sixth week age, he begins to develop vowel sounds, like “aah, ee, and ooh”. And lastly, at about the sixth month, he may say consonant-vowel pairs like “boo” or “adoo”.
In this stage, he learns which sounds belong to the language they are learning and which don’t. The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds- in spoken words is called, “phonemic awareness,” which is important for a growing child to know and get familiar with his surroundings.
Stage Two: Learning Words
At this stage, around one or a half age, the child begins to essentially learn how sounds go together to make meaning (word), this is called morpheme or is simply a sound or sounds that have a meaning. A perfect example is when a child begins to utter “mm-ah-mee” or mommy. This is a significant step because everything that the words people surrounding the child is really just a stream of sounds.
Stage Three: Learning Sentences
During this stage, the child has now the ability to create sentences. This usually occurs by the time the child enters kindergarten, he or she will have acquired the vast majority of the rules and sounds of the language. That means he is learning to put words in the correct order little by little. He may also start to notice the difference between grammatical correctness and meaning.
