Explain the key features of a child's phonological development

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Adam Weeks 12A        English Language: Child Language Acquisition

Explain the key features of a child's phonological development

        Many people believe that a child learns to speak at about the age of one and they are wrong. Every child starts to learn almost immediately although we as adults often cannot recognise it as learning to speak. Children go through several stages to learn, practice and then master their speech. It takes a child several years to achieve the various sounds in our language and in some cases, they are never fully comprehended.

        In the first couple of months of a child's life very little happens in the way of phonological development. The baby produces biological noises and processes such as crying and burping. The noises that are produced are made by the organs that will later be involved with speech production. Another essential element to this stage is the regulation of airflow into the body, which is fundamental to the production of speech. The baby has no opportunity to advance beyond this stage until approximately eight weeks when the their vocal tract gradually reshapes itself into the adult pattern.

        Following the engagement of the vocal organs, the baby is able produce a significant amount of sounds. After eight weeks, the 'cooing' stage ensues. The infant starts to produce random vocal noises that are often described as 'baby noises'. The earliest comfort sounds may be grunts or sighs, with later versions being closer to 'coos'. As this stage continues the baby's sounds become, more elongated and separated only by glottal stops. As this stage nears its end, many children learn the art of laughing and at about eighteen weeks the baby is laughing frequently. Another feature of this stage is the ability of the child to use different tones to emphasise his or her desires such as anger or humour. This stage is often labelled the time at which children start to gain control of the activities required for speech production; these include the movement of the tongue, lips and vocal folds.

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        Succeeding the 'cooing' stage, a short stage of 'vocal play' starts. The baby starts to experiment with different sounds that he/she can now make. The number of phonemes a baby can produce at this level is approximately 150. These varieties of sounds can be combined to produce any language and it is not until phonemic contraction takes place that the number of sounds is greatly reduced. The sounds produced are often longer and the number of vowel and consonant sounds is much greater than at the 'cooing' stage. Children at this age often try to manipulate the pitch of sounds ...

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