7 Stages of Child Language Development Stage 1 From birth to 4 months of age, infants are in the stage of unconscious communication. Parents can only interpret the child’s cooing or crying according to their own ideas, so this stage is also called interpretive communication. At the beginning, the child is not aware that his or her own vocalizations or cries can influence the behavior of the parents, but the parents treat the child as an individual communicator since the first day of life, and respond to the child’s different voices with different kinds of care. Some parents use short simple sentences to speak to the child, and mothers, in particular, sometimes use high pitches and exaggerated voices to tease the child. In such an environment, the child learns to look for objects of communication, and gradually develops interactions between the parents and the child, such as crying to indicate that the child wants to be held by the parents, or asking the parents to take care of the child when he or she is hungry or has wetted himself or herself. Thus, the next stage is entered. The second stage 4 ~ 9 months, for the stage of conscious communication. 4 months of the child can use the eyes to stare at the parents pointed things, parents and children to the eyes of the same thing, at this time, it is best for the parents to mouth the words, to the child to say the name of the object. At about 6 to 8 months of age, the parent can say the name to the picture. At 9 months of age, the child can have communicative gaze, that is, not only looking at things, but also turn to the parents, pay attention to the parents’ reaction, the emergence of this ability means that the child and the parents have a conscious information transfer. In addition, 9-month-old infants can also understand some nouns, such as “light”, “ball”, “dog” and so on. The third stage 9~18 months, is the word stage. At about 12 months of age, the child can say words, most of which are nouns in nature. Although the pediatrician understands some verbs early on, speaking verbs lags behind speaking nouns. At this stage, the pediatrician will use some of the words he or she will say to express himself or herself in situations; words develop a little more slowly at first, but then a very fast two-word phrase emerges. Generally, children can say at least 50 words before they develop phrases. Therefore the parent’s main task at this stage is to expand the child’s vocabulary, and around 18 months, two-word phrases appear. Stage 4 From 18 to 24 months, the stage of phrases. During this period, the little children will use words and phrases to say things about themselves and the environment in which they live, and have the first forms of utterances. Instead of focusing on the content of the child’s words, parents train the child to use sentences, which include a grammatical component, and language training should take place in the child’s environment, encouraging them to communicate with parents and teachers. At the beginning of this stage, parents provide their children with demonstrations of phrases, such as “sit on the stool” and “kiss the doll”. Language experts are divided between those who favor and those who oppose this “telegraphic” modeling of speech. However, one principle should be kept in mind: language is not just a combination of simple words that express meaning, but rather it is the grammatical formation of sentences that make sense. Therefore, in intervening with children’s language, parents should avoid communicating with their children using grammatically inexact words. Stage 5 24 to 36 months, the early sentence-making stage. The child is no longer limited to speaking about things in the here and now, but can also speak about things that are not in front of him or her, and can use simple phrases such as nouns plus verbs. In speech, the child can also use pronouns “I, you, he”, prepositions “up, down”, adjectives “good, bad, more, less” and so on. By about 36 months of age, children can basically express themselves in short sentences and begin to move into a complete sentence-making system. Stage 6: Sentence Mastery Stage: 3 to 5 years old. The child can use simple and more complex sentences, has mastered most forms of grammatical structure, and is able to have a little understanding of the abstract relationship of words. Some psychologists believe that the child’s vocabulary at this stage is close to that of an adult, and that he or she speaks like a “small adult”. At this time, parents and children to focus on the communication of complete sentence expression, for the child to play a role model, and at the same time to train the child to follow the instructions to do things, so as to prepare for the school language. Stage 7 Age 5~Adult, the complete grammar stage. From this point on, children gradually build adult-like language skills, and children in this process are still expanding their vocabulary, improving their expressions and the use of language in the environment, but no longer adding new forms of language. This is a period of marked growth in the individual’s ability to communicate, and some experts believe that the age of five is a watershed in language development, and that from this point until the age of twelve, there will be a fundamental change in the development of language, not only in the complexity of sentences, but also in the development of the meaning of sentences and the use of language to an advanced level, and that one of the most notable changes will be the use of language in which the child learns to read and to write.