Attention and listening skills:

Children need to be able to hear sounds, and develop the skills to listen to sounds and speech, before their own speech can develop.
Attention skills develop from birth as a child learns to pay attention to objects and people. Children learn to look and listen to what other people are saying or doing. By the time a child is 6 years old they should have learned to manage their attention skills independently. A child of this age can listen to someone talking while they are doing something else. They can also independently switch their attention from what they are doing to listen to someone talking and then refocus on their original task without being prompted to do so by an adult.

 

Play and social interaction skills:

Children learn lots about communication through playing with toys and people and so they need lots of opportunity to play. Play has a specific order of development. Babies start with ‘exploratory play’, which helps them learn about the physical properties of objects. They then go on to ‘functional play’ where they use toys as they are supposed to be used, before progressing to ‘pretend / symbolic play’ where they learn that an item can be used to represent something else. For example, they might pretend that a toy cup is a real cup with juice in it or a toy banana is a telephone. Once children can do this they also grasp the idea that words can represent real things, so the word ‘cup’ refers to the item ‘cup’.
Children also learn social skills through play. They learn to take an interest in each other, share, co-operate, take turns and negotiate through playing with others.

Understanding language:

Children learn to understand words, sentences, conversations and stories. They have to learn to understand words before they can begin to use them. Children can usually understand more words than they say. In order for understanding of language to develop, a child needs to have developed their social skills, attention and listening skills and play skills to the appropriate level.

Expressive language:

Children start by learning to say single words around the age of one year. They then progress to combining two words together and then to saying short sentences.
Children need to develop their expressive vocabulary and expressive grammar skills in order to put sentences together and to tell short stories about what they have seen or done.

Speech pronunciation skills and fluency of speech:

Children develop the range of sounds they can say as they get older. Certain sounds can develop later, and so some children continue to make pronunciation errors until the age of 7.

Some children get stuck on words as they are talking. They may repeat or stretch out words or sounds. Sometimes children can ‘block’ when trying to say a word or sound and they can’t get the sound out. These fluency difficulties are often referred to as a stammer. Although it is common for pre-schoolers to have some fluency difficulties, it is always good to seek advice about how to manage the stammer from a Speech and Language Therapist experienced in managing fluency difficulties.