Swan
Communication
Therapies
Speech/Language Assessment and Treatment
Speech/Language
Development
The following are guidelines regarding speech and language development.
Receptive Language Milestones
(guidelines to gauge how a child understands/comprehends language)
| Age | Receptive Language Milestone |
| ~12-16 months | Child should recognize the names of simple, common objects, familiar people, and action verbs. Child should follow simple directions with cues. |
| ~18 months | Child should understand verbs in context (eat, drink, sleep). Child should know a few major body parts, and understand up to 50 words. |
| ~2 years | Child should recognize many common objects and pictures when named. Child should also be able to follow several simple directions. |
| ~3 years | Child should be able to listen to simple stories, follow a two-step command, and understand the concept of taking turns. |
| ~4 years | Child should be able to correctly identify colors, spatial concepts and make inferences. |
| ~5 years | Child should understand time concepts, understand qualitative and quantitative concepts, understand "-er" as "one who does something". |
| ~6 years | Child should understand passive voice tense, identify objects that don't belong, and be able to order pictures from largest to smallest. |
Expressive Language Milestones
(guidelines to gauge how a child communicates using gestures, vocalizations or words)
| Age | Expressive Language Milestone |
| ~12 months | Child should produce one to three words. |
| ~18 months | Child should try to communicate with more words than gestures. Child should imitate/repeat some overheard words. |
| ~2 years | Child should use 50-200 words by 24 months. Child should join two to three words into phrases such as "more milk" or "bye dada". |
| ~2½ years | Child should begin to use short phrases 3-4 words in length. Child should be able to answer what, where, yes/no questions. Child uses verb+ing construction. |
| ~3 years | Child should have a vocabulary of approximately 1000 words and produce multiword utterances. |
| ~3½ years | Child should be able to name pictures in a book, tell how an object is used, and use possessives. |
| ~4 years | Child’s language should resemble adult-like language, complex sentence forms are used and complex sentence constructions (irregular and regular past tense) are used more frequently. |
| ~4½ years | Child should be able to respond to "where" questions and complete analogies. |
| ~5½ years | Child should have mastery of most syntactic rules and can converse easily. Child should be able to repeat sentences, use adjectives to describe people and objects and define words. |
| ~6½ years | Child should be able to retell a story with visual support, define words, rhyme words, and repair grammatical errors. |
Speech Developmental Milestones
(guidelines are provided to demonstrate an age when particular speech sounds should be mastered. These guidelines are based on research by Smit, et al., 1990- 90% criterion level)
| Consonant | Females Age |
Males Age |
/m/ |
3 | 3 |
| /n/ | 3½ | 3 |
| /h/ | 3 | 3 |
| /p/ | 3 | 3 |
| /f/ | 3½ | 3½ |
| /w/ | 3 | 3 |
| /b/ | 3 | 3 |
| “ng” (as in sing) | 7-9 | 7-9 |
| “y” (as in “yellow”) | 4 | 5 |
| /k/ | 3½ | 3½ |
| /g/ | 3½ | 4 |
| /l/ | 6 | 6 |
| /d/ | 3 | 3½ |
| /t/ | 4 | 3½ |
| /s/ | 7-9 | 7-9 |
| /r/ | 8 | 8 |
| “ch” | 6 | 7 |
| /v/ | 5½ | 5½ |
| /z/ | 7-9 | 7-9 |
| “th” (voiceless as in thin) | 6 | 8 |
| “sh” (as in shin) | 6 | 7 |
| “th” (voiced as in the) | 4½ | 7 |
Some other first developments....
