Language development in children starts from infancy. When the baby initially produces involuntary sounds, the parents help the child with language development by responding positively to the sounds. The initially involuntary sounds become random: the first speech sounds that the child makes arise as a result of random tongue and lip movements.
Language development and listening development work together
Language development and listening development are of course related. Listening development is reflected in sounds that the child produces itself. As listening develops, children will increasingly tune their own sound production to the sounds they hear and practice these sounds. The sound production then becomes language specific. From 3 months they are able to make vowel-like sounds such as an elongated aa or oo. This is called universal babbling. By the end of the first year of life, the pronunciation of the sound and the sound patterns have been differentiated according to the language system in which the child grows up. The language supply is of great importance for the development of listening and sound production . The child must be given practice material to develop his or her own sound production. Listening is the basis for language development, but also for musical development.
Correlation between motor activities and sound formation
Children produce sounds through motor activities: involuntary movements of the tongue and lips. They are given the intention to hold the attention of those who look at them. This is how sounds naturally arise. Providing feedback on the sounds encourages the child to further develop the sounds. In the first phase of speech development, children develop sounds so that they resemble sounds from the environment. This leads to function play with sounds. They listen to their own sounds and also repeat with variation in loudness and intonation.
Language development: the attention-grabbing stage
At around eight months they start attracting attention by making loud, short, vowel-like sounds and they have a lot of fun doing this. They make sounds like èèè, hùùù or lip sounds: mk, w, b, p. There is no fixed order and children have their specific preferences. Peekaboo games are a hot item right now. Very beneficial for sensori-motor development .
For language development it is important:
- To provide feedback: encourage the child to babble by making sounds themselves.
- To speak short sentences to the child when you are working with the child.
- Sing simple songs, say rhymes. Preferably accompanied by movements, such as in the song ‘clap your hands.’
- To name what the child is looking at.
- To read aloud, where the child can feel, look, listen, move.
- To let the child play regularly.