Language acquisition is one of the most important learning journeys of our lives. It’s magical how a baby that starts off with babbles, and coos finally use the first word to call their mother or father.
Language acquisition, as a journey, starts at a very early age when the baby is just a few weeks old, and it goes on for years till the baby has fully developed linguistic skills.
However, this journey isn’t smooth sailing for every one of us and some of us struggle with language skills and developing fluency well into their adulthood. This skill gap can hinder their personal and professional development affecting their work and personal relationships.
As a parent, teacher, or caregiver, it’s important to know how well a child is acquiring their language and what we can do to help them improve.
Prelinguistic Stage
This stage starts when your child is between 0 and 12 months of age. This is the time when an infant starts to articulate different sounds. They coo and make noises before finally starting to babble and using different vowels and consonants. These are nothing but their attempts to communicate with others.
Holophrastic Stage
The holophrastic stage is the next stage in your child’s language acquisition process. This is when they start to use single words, which pave the way for complete communication using sentences. This phase starts around the time when babies are 12 to 18 months of age.
In this phase, infants follow their parents or caregivers talking around them and start to mimic their communication. They use single words like papa or mama. But they are trying to convey more than what they can articulate.
Two-word stage
The two-word stage is the next phase in your child’s language acquisition phase. They can start by using one word at a time when trying to convey something or send a message. However, when they fail to do so, they use a combination of multiple words (two at first) to tell others about their needs.
This is when they start to form simple words and phrases. They don’t use very sophisticated words and phrases at this phase. But you’ll start to understand what they are trying to mean at the start.
Telegraphic Stage
The telegraphic stage of the language acquisition involves children who are between the age of 24 months to 30 months. In this phase they are trying to communicate very short phrases and communications.
This is almost like writing a short sentence on telegram. However, these short sentences often don’t have verbs, prepositions, articles, and will have different main words when you have the most important ones that convey the message.
The Early Multi-word stage
This is the language acquisition phase, where the children start to build their vocabulary and use more words in their sentences. They develop a better sense of sentences and can expand their vocabulary with new words.
At this age, they are more capable of articulating better sentences with proper grammar skills. They started to use verbs, plurals, and other structures of a well-structured sentence in their speech. It’s almost similar to turning a sentence into a short letter.
Multi-Layer Words
Going forward, as children start to learn new words and master communication and grammar, they can build fuller and more complex sentences. You might notice that the children can use new words which are far more complex.
You can also see them using prepositions, conjunctions, and also playing around with different word structures. In this phase, they still have to improve their prosody.
Mature Stage
Finally, if all the previous stages were going well, your child enters the stage of mature language learning around the age of 5 years. This phase can also come a bit later than 5 years.
In this phase, their grammar has improved, with a much better sense of vocabulary and strong confidence in their overall communication skills as they pronounce more words. They make minor mistakes in communication which are often negligible.
Children who are struggling to acquire language in this stage often go through Phonics classes helping them build better relations between words and phrases.
Conclusion
These stages of language acquisition happen early on when your child is between 0 months to 5 years old. However, things may be difficult for children who are struggling with issues like ADHD, dyslexia, ADHD or other learning disabilities. These disabilities stop them from learning different languages.
However, it’s still possible for every child to pass successfully through different levels of language learning stages with specialized help.
