Language is a system of exchanging information in a way that has meaning. Speech is the vehicle by which language is conveyed. Toddlers learn to combine language and speech over the first four years of life. The first three years of a child's life are the most important for the development of speech and language, according to the National Institutes of Health. Exposure to language is the foundation for normal language development.
Developmental Milestones
Childhood development varies among toddlers; however, the normal development of language follows a time-line. An individual child's language development depends on his environment, but normal language development is charted, not by total reliance on the timeline, but by looking for certain developmental milestones. Milestones are language skills that point to normal language development, which is characterized by a progression from mastering simple skills to learning more complex skills.
How Language is Learned
From birth to age three, the brain's ability to absorb language is at its strongest, making this a critical period for language development. By the time a child reaches the toddler age, he has been learning language since he was just a few days old and realized that crying gets results. Infants and toddlers learn language through exposure to speech, language, sounds and sights. Parents and caregivers encourage toddlers to learn language by speaking to them, helping them learn new sounds and words, reading books together with them and listening when they talk.
What a Toddler Knows
Children build the components of language year by year, progressing from chuckling and laughing, to babbling and gurgling, to making repetitive sounds like "bababa" and on to nonsense speech that imitates the tone and cadence of real speech. An infant learns to control his tongue, jaw and lips to produce more sounds and at two years of age, the toddler understands the sounds that make up his language and has a small, functional vocabulary. He understands simple requests, like "come here." He has the foundation to continue his language development and over the next two years that development moves quickly.
One to Two Years
During the second year of life, a child learns the names of her body parts and can point to them if asked. She learns to respond to more simple commands and simple questions, like "roll the ball" and "where's the shoe." She puts two words together for simple communication, such as "more juice" and "go bye-bye." She is mastering the consonant sounds that begin words and by the time she is 18 months old, she can say about 8 to 10 words. At two years of age, she is using more words to form simple sentences and learns more and more quickly that words are connected to objects, thoughts and actions. Toddlers who are exposed to lots of language in their homes develop larger vocabularies, a better understanding of how language represents concepts and more skill with forming sentences.
Two to Three Years
Between the ages of two and three, a toddler begins to understand opposites and different meanings like "stop and go," "big and little" and "up and down." He follows two simultaneous requests, such as, "get the ball and put it in the closet." During this period, he learns words for nearly everything in his environment and uses phrases of two to three words. He makes the "d," "f," "g," "k," "n" and "t" sounds, and people outside of the family usually understand what he says.
Three to Four Years
Between the ages of three and five, vocabulary grows at a rapid rate. The child is mastering the rules of language and learning to form complete sentences, usually with four or more words, and speaks with an easy, less repetitive flow of words. She answers simple questions like "who, what, where and why" and carries on conversations about what happens during her day.
References
- National Institutes of Health: Speech and Language
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Birth to One Year
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: One to Two Years
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Two to Three Years
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Three to Four Years
