How Children Learn To Talk
It is important to understand how speech, language and communication, usually develop. The ability to communicate with other people involves a surprising number of skills and importantly, the opportunity and motivation to communicate. The child’s age and stage of development must also be taken into account.
The range of skills include:
Using the senses, listening and understanding to take in information
- Attention and listening
- Interpret facial expressions and tone of voice
- Remembering spoken information
- Recognising the difference between sounds in words
- Understanding individual words
- Understanding words in connected speech
- Understanding what someone means in a particular situation, including expressions such as ‘ get your skates on’ to mean hurry up.
- Having ideas about how to respond/what to say
Expressing yourself and responding – This may be through Talking, Facial Expression, Body Language, Signing or Symbols
- Deciding how to respond/what to say
- Choosing words
- Putting words together to talk
- Talking or joining in with a conversation appropriately
- Making the mouth and tongue movements necessary to form clear sounds
- Speaking clearly and smoothly without too many stops and starts
The skills and processes involved in Speech and Language are illustrated in Elklan’s Communication Chain, The Language Pyramid, and The Functional Model of Language. See Below
