Language Learning Stages

www.fridayschildmontessori.com

Stage 1 in learning a language is the pre-

language stage – or the crying stage. This

isn’t really considered language, as the

sounds a newborn makes are just responses

to the world outside and inside them,

especially the world inside the stomach and

inside the nappy.

However, during this stage, babies are aware

of the sounds around them and can hear the

differences between language sounds

(phonemes).

Talk to your baby lots. Instinctively, you will

probably speak in “motherese”, where you

talk in a funny high-pitched voice and baby

talk. Don’t train yourself out of this – babies

hear these high frequencies better than lower

voices.

Stage 2 is the babbling stage, where your

little baby sits and “talks to the angels” in a

string of sounds. They say that during this

stage, babies are sorting out the sounds that

belong in the mother tongue from those that

don’t – though how on earth the experts

know this is open for debate.

They are also learning the tones or notes of

conversation. You can help them during this

stage by having conversations with them,

where you ask questions and say things, and

treat their babbles in response as if it was a

sensible reply.

If you don’t know what to say, read out an

article from a magazine and ask their opinion

about it.

Stage 3 is the one-word stage, and it’s the

one that parents love. The first word is so

special. The words that children are most

likely to say first have one or two syllables,

with the syllables ending in a vowel sound.

Children get a lot of mileage out of their single words. Obviously, “no” is a useful

word that can mean “I don’t want to,” “I

don’t like that,” “I’m not happy” and “I’ve

had enough of this” as well as general

displeasure and reluctance.

It’s part of becoming a separate individual:

you now have the ability to express an

opinion that’s different from Mum’s.

Stage 4 is the two-word stage where children

begin to string words together. During this

stage, some phrases are treated as “words”.

For example, they might treat “all gone”,

“bye bye” and “beep beep” as single words.

During this stage, personal pronouns (us,

you, him, her, they, etc.) don’t get used,

although some children get the hang of

“me”.

Stage 5 is the simple sentence stage, where

children string more words together,

although they leave out a lot of the

grammatical bits like prepositions (to, from,

for, at) and things that attach onto verbs (-

ing, -ed and so forth). They stick to the main

words.

Stage 6 is the refining stage when sentences

get more complicated. This can be a tricky

stage for parents, as the things that children

say are almost right but not quite right.

This is because children have managed to

figure out the basic grammatical rules but

haven’t worked out the irregularities (and

English is one of the most irregular

languages known!).

Children say things like “The zoo mens

holded the mouses.” This far, they’ve figured

out that you add S to make a plural and that

you add –ed to make the past tense.

Don’t try to correct them. It won’t work

until their subconscious has learned the rules,

which will happen at their own pace.

Most parents instinctively avoid correcting

children’s grammar at this stage but focus on

the truth of the statement.

To quote a linguistics textbook it is “mildly

paradoxical… that the usual product of

such a training schedule is an adult whose

speech is highly grammatical but not notably

truthful.”

How can parents help children through

the process?

While you can’t speed the process of

acquiring a language up, the best thing that

you can do is to keep talking to your

children.

Live language is what counts (TV, DVDs

and CDs won’t help, so ignore any marketer

that tells you that if you pop your child down

in front of the box it will help their

language).

Read to them lots. Talk about anything and

everything. Sing to them and with them. As

long as it’s live language, they’ll learn it.

www.fridayschildmontessori.com