CIE A2 Level English: Stages of Child Language Acquisition
The Main Stages of Early Development
Most linguists believe language acquisition in children starts before birth. According to a French study by J. Mehler (1988), French babies as young as 4 days old recognized French and were more interested as opposed to hearing English or Italian.
Before birth
Babies are believed to acquire language before it is even born. It becomes acclimatised to the sounds of its native language.
Babbling (6-12 months)
Before babbling, children will go through biological/vegetative noises (0-2 months), cooing and laughing (2-5 months), and vocal play (5-8 months DURING babbling).
during these stages, children will go through various phases of phonological development
pre-expansion: where the number of different phonemes produced by a child increases initially
phonemic expansion: the number of different phonemes produced increase until about 9 or 10 months
phonemic contraction: sounds that are still needed in a child’s native language are kept but everything else is discarded
intonation: the change in pitch during babbling/speech which can indicate phrases
In the first year, babies experience the babbling stage from about 6 to 9 months old. This can develop as either reduplicated babbling or variegated babbling.
reduplicated babbling: repetition of certain syllables e.g gagaga or googoogoo
variegated babbling: babbling of a variety of syllables e.g goo-ga-ba-ga
Caregivers and parents will often speak in ‘caretaker language’.
Caretaker speech has the following observable features:
higher intonation
repetition
limited vocabulary
simple grammar
recasting
Caretaker language helps children develop the social skills to be able to hold a conversation. This includes spoken language features such as turn-taking and feedback.
Despite not being able to speak properly, children are still able to understand words spoken to them. This is because the comprehension of phonological patterns and meanings develops more quickly than a child’s ability to reproduce them.
Babies can also differentiate between speakers by the age of 3 months, hence why they tend to stop crying when they hear their parents. By 10 months old, they will develop phonemes that are specific to their native language, point and babble in a way that resembles speech on top of recognising repeated phrases.
Holophrastic Stage (1-2 years)
Between the age of 1 and 2 years old, children go through the holophrastic stage. The holophrastic stage includes the one-word stage and the two-word stage.
In the one-word stage, 60% of a child’s utterances at this stage are nouns. It is also at this stage where they begin to develop Michael Halliday’s instrumental and personal functions. Children at this stage may also exhibit errors of:
underextension: restricts word application e.g the colour white is used to describe snow but the child can be confused when it hears paper being described with the same word
overextension: word application is wider and precise application is misunderstood e.g car can refer to anything with wheels
deletion: simplification of pronunciation by deleting of certain sounds
substitution: simplification of pronounciation by substituting difficult sounds for easier sounds
reduplication: different sounds in a word are pronunced the same way
In the two-word stage, children have a vocaulary of about 50 words. Language is still limited but understanding is wider. No inflections to mark number, person, or tense are used, though children may use pronouns.
Telegraphic Stage (2-3 years)
Children have a huge increase in vocabulary by this stage. They are more logically coherent. They can also understand contrasting concepts.
Utterances at this stage are characterised by their lack of function words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. They will mainly consist of content words.
At around age 3, there is a dramatic change of language, such as:
use of conjunctions, mostly ‘and‘, which leads to more complex/compound sentences
non-fluency features
Children will engage with two types of child languages: monologues and dialogues.
Monologues occur at around age 2 and children will provide a running commentary. Dialogue occurs during a conversation between a child and another person.
Post-Telegraphic Stage (3-5 years)
At this stage, children’s speech will become more reminiscent of adult speech. Function words will be used alongside content words; contracted forms, verb inflections, and the formation of pronouns become more accurate
By about age 4, a child will speak in perfectly accurate complete sentences.
David Crystal’s Stages of Language Acquisition
David Crystal proposed that children learn language in five stages. These stages often tie in with each other.
Stage 1
This stage can also be referred as part of the holophrastic stage. A child’s first utterances serve 3 purposes:
to get someone’s attention
to direct attention to something
to get what they want
Stage 1 can progress to the two-word stage and making requests.
They will make basic statements such as “daddy car“ or “mummy drink“. They will use intonation as they do not have the full vocabulary to express themselves.
Stage 2
Children begin to ask questions, usually interrogatives such as ‘where‘. This involves Halliday’s heuristic, interactional, and personal functions.
At this stage, children are concerned with the classifying and naming of things; Jean Aitchison’s three stages of vocabulary acquisition (1987) relate to this stage. The three stages of vocabulary acquisition are:
labelling - children make the link of a word to objects, people, or experiences that they refer to
packaging - children learn the word’s range of meaning → under/overextension
networking - children begin to grasp the connections between words including relationships such as hypernyms and hyponyms
Stage 3
Children continue to ask more questions, but they will often be identified as questions through intonation. Sentence structure also becomes more complex e.g “I want mummy [to] take it [to] work“. Children will begin to refer to people’s mental states as well as past tense; their grasp of the future tense is still not developed. They will articulate the changing nature of things.
Stage 4
Children will use more complex sentence structures, which leads to:
explanation of things
asking for explanations, especially ‘why‘ questions
making a wider range of requests
Halliday’s regulatory function is used for questioning, while the personal function is used for discovery.
Children have now developed pragmatics by this stage. They know how to use language to suit the context or situation they are in. Some language features that develop in this stage include:
contracted negatives e.g don’t, couldn’t
‘isn’t’ is not developed until later
modal auxiliary verbs e.g do, can, will
(implied) relative clauses e.g that
Stage 5
Children are able to use language to carry out all their needs, by using Halliday’s seven functions of language, such as:
giving information (representational)
asking and answering questions (heuristic)
requesting (instrumental/regulatory)
suggesting (interactional/regulatory
offering (interactional)
stating intentions (personal)
asking intentions of others (interactional)
expressing feelings and attitudes (personal function)
asking feelings and attitudes of others (interactional)
Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence to observe their cognitive development. He came about his theory in the 1920s-30s following his job at the Binet Institute to create French versions of questions on English intelligence tests.
Piaget believed cognitive ability is inborn.
The sequence of stages is universal and always follows the same order. However, children are not guaranteed to follow the stages at the same rate.
Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years)
The goal of the sensorimotor stage is object permanence. A baby will focus on physical sensations and body coordination. Other goals of this stage include:
self-recognition: determining oneself as separate from others
deferred imitation: the repetition of an action based on the action being done previously by another person from an earlier time
representational play: engaging with toys or play in a manner that resembles real life, people, and/or actions
As long as a child engages with its environment through physical activities, their language and cognitive development will increase substantially as they realize words can be used to represent objects and feelings.
Pre-Operational Stage (2 years to 7 years)
Children at this stage will begin to think in definitive terms. They can classify objects but still struggle to classify things into sub-sets. However, they will also have an egocentric perspective of the world.
They are still not able to think logically, believing the world for how it looks rather than how it is.
Children will also develop animism, which is the tendency to believe non-living objects have life and feelings just like themselves as a person.
Concrete Operational Stage (7 years to 11 years)
Once children get over the pre-operational stage, they begin to think more logically about objects and events. Children also begin to understand the concept of conservation; although things may change, certain properties remain the same.
They will become less egocentric by this stage and begin to develop sympathy/empathy for others.
Piaget marked this stage as a turning point in a child’s cognitive development as it marks when a child is able to think logically and in an operational manner; they can work things out in their heads.
However, they will still be overwhelmed with abstract or hypothetical problems.
Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over)
As opposed to the concrete operational stage, children will develop their ability to comprehend abstract and hypothetical problems such as the future and idealogical problems. They also can finally classify items in a more sophisticated manner rather than underextending or overextending.
They will begin to understand politics, ethics, science fiction, and scientific reasoning as they can think more systematically and create hypotheses.
Formal operation is free from physical and perceptual constraints. They won’t always need specific examples to form an argument.
schema — filing system for nouns, disequilibrium, assimilation, equilibrium, labelling
comparative adjectives, superlatives
peek-a-boo
helping a child to label
children can still speak fluently despite developmental challenges
CIE A2 Level English: Stages of Child Language Acquisition
The Main Stages of Early Development
Most linguists believe language acquisition in children starts before birth. According to a French study by J. Mehler (1988), French babies as young as 4 days old recognized French and were more interested as opposed to hearing English or Italian.
Before birth
Babies are believed to acquire language before it is even born. It becomes acclimatised to the sounds of its native language.
Babbling (6-12 months)
Before babbling, children will go through biological/vegetative noises (0-2 months), cooing and laughing (2-5 months), and vocal play (5-8 months DURING babbling).
during these stages, children will go through various phases of phonological development
pre-expansion: where the number of different phonemes produced by a child increases initially
phonemic expansion: the number of different phonemes produced increase until about 9 or 10 months
phonemic contraction: sounds that are still needed in a child’s native language are kept but everything else is discarded
intonation: the change in pitch during babbling/speech which can indicate phrases
In the first year, babies experience the babbling stage from about 6 to 9 months old. This can develop as either reduplicated babbling or variegated babbling.
reduplicated babbling: repetition of certain syllables e.g gagaga or googoogoo
variegated babbling: babbling of a variety of syllables e.g goo-ga-ba-ga
Caregivers and parents will often speak in ‘caretaker language’.
Caretaker speech has the following observable features:
higher intonation
repetition
limited vocabulary
simple grammar
recasting
Caretaker language helps children develop the social skills to be able to hold a conversation. This includes spoken language features such as turn-taking and feedback.
Despite not being able to speak properly, children are still able to understand words spoken to them. This is because the comprehension of phonological patterns and meanings develops more quickly than a child’s ability to reproduce them.
Babies can also differentiate between speakers by the age of 3 months, hence why they tend to stop crying when they hear their parents. By 10 months old, they will develop phonemes that are specific to their native language, point and babble in a way that resembles speech on top of recognising repeated phrases.
Holophrastic Stage (1-2 years)
Between the age of 1 and 2 years old, children go through the holophrastic stage. The holophrastic stage includes the one-word stage and the two-word stage.
In the one-word stage, 60% of a child’s utterances at this stage are nouns. It is also at this stage where they begin to develop Michael Halliday’s instrumental and personal functions. Children at this stage may also exhibit errors of:
underextension: restricts word application e.g the colour white is used to describe snow but the child can be confused when it hears paper being described with the same word
overextension: word application is wider and precise application is misunderstood e.g car can refer to anything with wheels
deletion: simplification of pronunciation by deleting of certain sounds
substitution: simplification of pronounciation by substituting difficult sounds for easier sounds
reduplication: different sounds in a word are pronunced the same way
In the two-word stage, children have a vocaulary of about 50 words. Language is still limited but understanding is wider. No inflections to mark number, person, or tense are used, though children may use pronouns.
Telegraphic Stage (2-3 years)
Children have a huge increase in vocabulary by this stage. They are more logically coherent. They can also understand contrasting concepts.
Utterances at this stage are characterised by their lack of function words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. They will mainly consist of content words.
At around age 3, there is a dramatic change of language, such as:
use of conjunctions, mostly ‘and‘, which leads to more complex/compound sentences
non-fluency features
Children will engage with two types of child languages: monologues and dialogues.
Monologues occur at around age 2 and children will provide a running commentary. Dialogue occurs during a conversation between a child and another person.
Post-Telegraphic Stage (3-5 years)
At this stage, children’s speech will become more reminiscent of adult speech. Function words will be used alongside content words; contracted forms, verb inflections, and the formation of pronouns become more accurate
By about age 4, a child will speak in perfectly accurate complete sentences.
David Crystal’s Stages of Language Acquisition
David Crystal proposed that children learn language in five stages. These stages often tie in with each other.
Stage 1
This stage can also be referred as part of the holophrastic stage. A child’s first utterances serve 3 purposes:
to get someone’s attention
to direct attention to something
to get what they want
Stage 1 can progress to the two-word stage and making requests.
They will make basic statements such as “daddy car“ or “mummy drink“. They will use intonation as they do not have the full vocabulary to express themselves.
Stage 2
Children begin to ask questions, usually interrogatives such as ‘where‘. This involves Halliday’s heuristic, interactional, and personal functions.
At this stage, children are concerned with the classifying and naming of things; Jean Aitchison’s three stages of vocabulary acquisition (1987) relate to this stage. The three stages of vocabulary acquisition are:
labelling - children make the link of a word to objects, people, or experiences that they refer to
packaging - children learn the word’s range of meaning → under/overextension
networking - children begin to grasp the connections between words including relationships such as hypernyms and hyponyms
Stage 3
Children continue to ask more questions, but they will often be identified as questions through intonation. Sentence structure also becomes more complex e.g “I want mummy [to] take it [to] work“. Children will begin to refer to people’s mental states as well as past tense; their grasp of the future tense is still not developed. They will articulate the changing nature of things.
Stage 4
Children will use more complex sentence structures, which leads to:
explanation of things
asking for explanations, especially ‘why‘ questions
making a wider range of requests
Halliday’s regulatory function is used for questioning, while the personal function is used for discovery.
Children have now developed pragmatics by this stage. They know how to use language to suit the context or situation they are in. Some language features that develop in this stage include:
contracted negatives e.g don’t, couldn’t
‘isn’t’ is not developed until later
modal auxiliary verbs e.g do, can, will
(implied) relative clauses e.g that
Stage 5
Children are able to use language to carry out all their needs, by using Halliday’s seven functions of language, such as:
giving information (representational)
asking and answering questions (heuristic)
requesting (instrumental/regulatory)
suggesting (interactional/regulatory
offering (interactional)
stating intentions (personal)
asking intentions of others (interactional)
expressing feelings and attitudes (personal function)
asking feelings and attitudes of others (interactional)
Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence to observe their cognitive development. He came about his theory in the 1920s-30s following his job at the Binet Institute to create French versions of questions on English intelligence tests.
Piaget believed cognitive ability is inborn.
The sequence of stages is universal and always follows the same order. However, children are not guaranteed to follow the stages at the same rate.
Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years)
The goal of the sensorimotor stage is object permanence. A baby will focus on physical sensations and body coordination. Other goals of this stage include:
self-recognition: determining oneself as separate from others
deferred imitation: the repetition of an action based on the action being done previously by another person from an earlier time
representational play: engaging with toys or play in a manner that resembles real life, people, and/or actions
As long as a child engages with its environment through physical activities, their language and cognitive development will increase substantially as they realize words can be used to represent objects and feelings.
Pre-Operational Stage (2 years to 7 years)
Children at this stage will begin to think in definitive terms. They can classify objects but still struggle to classify things into sub-sets. However, they will also have an egocentric perspective of the world.
They are still not able to think logically, believing the world for how it looks rather than how it is.
Children will also develop animism, which is the tendency to believe non-living objects have life and feelings just like themselves as a person.
Concrete Operational Stage (7 years to 11 years)
Once children get over the pre-operational stage, they begin to think more logically about objects and events. Children also begin to understand the concept of conservation; although things may change, certain properties remain the same.
They will become less egocentric by this stage and begin to develop sympathy/empathy for others.
Piaget marked this stage as a turning point in a child’s cognitive development as it marks when a child is able to think logically and in an operational manner; they can work things out in their heads.
However, they will still be overwhelmed with abstract or hypothetical problems.
Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over)
As opposed to the concrete operational stage, children will develop their ability to comprehend abstract and hypothetical problems such as the future and idealogical problems. They also can finally classify items in a more sophisticated manner rather than underextending or overextending.
They will begin to understand politics, ethics, science fiction, and scientific reasoning as they can think more systematically and create hypotheses.
Formal operation is free from physical and perceptual constraints. They won’t always need specific examples to form an argument.
schema — filing system for nouns, disequilibrium, assimilation, equilibrium, labelling
comparative adjectives, superlatives
peek-a-boo
helping a child to label
children can still speak fluently despite developmental challenges
