Speech and language are essential skills required for success and progress in future for every child. Development of speech and language takes place in an expected pattern.
By 5-6 years of age a child has a vocabulary of about 14,000 to 30,000 words and the child has good basic command over language. With progress of middle childhood children start thinking in more complex ways. For example a 5 year old can understand simple sentences whereas a 10 year old child can read and interpret complicated content within a paragraph. A 5 year old can write a few words or a simple sentence but a 10 year old can write complex stories and reports. By middle childhood (5-12 years) a child understands that one word can have more than one meaning like CORN can mean the cereal or the hard, painful growth on the skin. Likewise he or she understands that though HERE and HEAR sound the same they different meanings and different spellings.
What can my child do at this age
Communication skill for 5-6 year-old child
- Most children in this age speak clearly and can carry on a conversation with you about everyday subjects.
- Can tell their name, address, age and birthday.
- Ask the meaning of words, can tell about various objects and their use e.g. a knife is used for cutting.
- Can tell stories and speak a few lines on a thing at school e.g. in a “show and tell” activity.
- Like to listen to stories and recite or sing rhymes and songs.
- Can understand and tell jokes and riddles. Their jokes may appear rather silly to adults.
Communication skill for 6-9 year-old child
- Should be speaking clearly and effortlessly in the language used at home. Can express a range of ideas and explain complicated happenings.
- Loves to tell jokes and riddles.
- Enjoys using metaphors and tongue twisters
- Can use telephone confidently
- Enjoy reading book on their own.
Communication skill for 10-12 year old child
- Speech is well developed.
- Can use complex and compound sentences easily
- Has few lapses in grammar like use of tense, pronouns, plurals
- Can notice mistake in other’s speech
- Can read with considerable ease and write compositions
- Social etiquettes are present in speech in appropriate situations, can control of rate, pitch, and volume of speech
- Can follow fairly complex directions
You can help language development of your child by reading together every day. This helps to maintain your child’s interest in reading and learning new words. Encourage your child to look at a picture and describe what they can see. This increases your child’s vocabulary and gives new ideas. Consult a physician if your child seems significantly behind in speech and language development.
