What is understanding and using language?

Children are especially adept at learning one or more languages during their early years. Early exposure to language is much more likely to result in successful language acquisition in the long term. This includes sign languages.

For most children, their understanding of language (receptive language) is well ahead of their language use (expressive language). Typically, language begins with babbling and making consonant and vowel sounds associated with their home languages. This rapidly builds to single words, combining words into short or simplified (telegraphic) sentences and then whole sentences. Words and phrases may be spoken, signed, or indicated on images (e.g. using AAC systems). Children use their increasingly complex linguistic skills to play with others, make up stories, express their feelings and enjoy the ambiguities of words and their meanings.

Not all children develop language in the same way. For example: 

• Autistic children often connect meanings to ‘chunks’ of words or phrases as they learn a language. This is known as Gestalt language processing. Language chunks or ‘gestalts’ can be whole songs or movies, phrases, or single words. 
• Children learning New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) as a first language may produce first signs slightly earlier than spoken words, but otherwise will generally follow similar learning progression as children learning spoken languages. 
• For bi- and multi-lingual learners, vocabulary develops across all their languages. This means vocabulary growth in any one of their languages can appear slower compared to children who are mono-lingual. It is therefore important to understand how vocabulary is growing across all of a child’s languages. 

While language learning is unique to each child there are many common elements that feature in successful acquisition. 

Communication begins for infants when they recognise familiar voices, sounds and signs and learn that their vocalisations will bring food, comfort, and companionship. As they grow, infants become increasingly aware of the speech sounds of their language. By six months of age, most babies recognise the basic sounds of the language(s) spoken in their home and early childhood settings. Children vary in their development of speech and language. However, they follow a natural progression for mastering the skills of language. Sometimes a delay may be caused by hearing loss, while other times it may be due to a speech or language disorder. 

Learning new words involves three key components: knowing how to say the word; understanding its meaning; and learning how to use it in communication. Vocabulary development accelerates in most children, starting with small gains in the first year and increasing rapidly in the second and third years as neural pathways in the brain develop.  Since vocabulary knowledge is directly linked to reading comprehension in school-aged children, learning and understanding a large vocabulary is a crucial precursor to learning how to read.

Children need to develop a range of vocabulary in order to think and communicate successfully, including:

• Social words (such as ‘bye-bye’, ‘kia ora’)
• Requesting words (such as ‘please’, ‘more’, ‘ano’)
• Naming words (such as family members, colours, numbers, animals)
• Verbs/action words (such as ‘go’, ‘kai’, ‘drink’, ‘moe’, ‘pekepeke’, ‘open’, ‘push’)
• Early pronouns (such as ‘ahau’, ‘mine’, ‘my’, ‘I’, ‘koe’)
• Prepositions/location words (such as ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘off’, ‘on’, ‘runga’, ‘raro’, ‘here’, ‘there’)
• Negation (such as ‘no’, ‘kahore’ and then later contractions including ‘don’t’, ‘can’t’)
• Adjectives & adverbs or descriptive words (such as ‘nui’, ‘hot’, ‘tere’, ‘sticky’, ‘yucky’)

Grammar is the system and structure of language, including rules for how words, phrases and sentences can go together. The development of grammatical understanding is observable in the increasing complexity of children’s sentences. Grammar includes the following components:

• Syntax – the arrangement of words to form phrases or sentences. A key indicator that children are learning language rules is when they begin combining words into two-word sentences, for example “Mummy ball”. 
• Semantics – how words are arranged in sentences to create meaning, for example, “the girl caught the ball” makes more sense than “the ball caught the girl”.
• Pragmatics – the way language is used in specific contexts and for various purposes, such as informal conversations, making requests, and telling jokes. An awareness of pragmatics helps children feel valued socially and develop a sense of agency and self-worth. 

Using language to communicate effectively with others is an essential life skill, supporting children to connect with others, build relationships and friendships, and to feel valued, respected, and a sense of belonging.

From birth on, back and forth, ‘serve-and-return’ patterns of communication play a vital role in building neural pathways for language and lay the foundations for social communication, as well as overall wellbeing.

Communicating effectively with others includes the ability to listen and interpret non-spoken cues as well as what is being said. It also includes understanding and adapting your communication, including what you say and how you say it, to fit the social and cultural norms and expectations in various situations.