Talking Kidz is a resource for parents who have questions about their child's speech and language development; want to know how to help their children improve their skills; and know where they can go for help. Parents have the opportunity to suggest topics or post questions by emailing the Speech Doc at TalkingKidz@gmail.com
Welcome back to Talking Kidz. I’m back on track to explore the communication skills and speech delays of children across the early years. In this episode, we’ll be focusing on the typical three year. I’m excited to share that I’ve included some speech samples of typical three year olds for your listening pleasure.
Speech includes the articulation of speech sounds, the rate at which someone speaks or fluency and the voice of the speaker in terms of the speaker’s pitch or loudness level, and use of intonation to convey meaning as well as the speaker voice quality such as hoarseness or too much or too little nasality. Language, on the other hand, relates to the meaning conveyed by the words used, the form or structure used to put words together to express ideas and the social use of language in given situations such as to request, to inform, etc.
And now on to the typical three year old.
Word Order:
In terms of receptive language, or what child understands, children at this age learn to pay attention to word order, as it expresses meaning.
Example: “It is his book.” is a statement, while, “Is it his book?” is a question. The words are identical but the order of the words is different.
Questions:
Children at this age are also typically able to answer basic Yes/no questions such as , “Are you hungry? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Is your name John?”
Children are also able to answer many questions that begin with the letters “WH” such as what, where and who. We call these “WH questions. The easiest one is “What” followed by where and then “who” What questions elicit a noun that is not a person, where questions elicit a location and “who” questions are asking for the name of a person or a particular position such as “teacher, president, carpenter, etc.
In terms of expressive language, children at this age typically speak in two to three word sentences (on the average).
The first pronouns appear at this age and they are usually me and my as in “my train, give me cookie”
A child of this age can tell story or share an experience in simple words.
They also learn to give very simple instructions and directions.
Speech, by age three, children learn all vowels and diphthongs
As far as consonants, children at this age are typically able say nasals sounds (m, n and ng) stop consonants (make by stopping the air supply (such as p/b and t/d.) Some are able to say K and g sounds but other have difficulty with these (k g) sounds made in the back of the mouth.
I know you won’t believe it but by age 3, most children will have learned up to 900 words.
And now, let’s listen to the speech of a typical 3 year old.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about speech and language development in a typical three year old. The entire transcript is available at:
TalkingKidz.blogspot.com
You can also contact me at Talkingkidz@gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
