Stages of First Language Acquisition

The process of L1 acquisition is fast, but is not instantaneous.

Children have to go through a whole process to achieve dominion over their native language, from birth to the stage of going to school.

For this reason, each language stage is conformed by different factors of grammar, semantics, syntax, sounds, speech, etc.

Birth

*0 months

*Innate sounds indicate: pain, pleasure, hungry, sleepy.

*Sounds without meaning

*Crying or coying

Pre-linguistic/Pre- vocalization

*0-3 months

*Babies make sounds for different needs: coughs, gurgles and coos

*Cof cof cof

Babbling

*4-6 months

*Combination of consonants with vowels

*Universal common sounds: pa pa , ba ba

Holophrastic

*7-12 month

*Emergence of the first word

*Babies lose the ability to discriminate between nonnative speech sounds and specialize in their native language.

*Repeating words: bye-bye

*Appears negation as simply 'No'

*Question: What?

Two-words

*2-3 years

*Clear words

*Expression through exclamations and adjectives

*Increase vocabulary

*Negation: 'No cookie'

*Questions as Who?, Where? , Why?

Telegraphic

*3-4 years

*Pre-school years

*Metalinguistic awareness

*The use of telegrapahic sentences: 'mommy juice'

*No articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs.

*Questions How?, When?

Multi-word

*4-6 years

*School years

*Long and detailed sentences.

*Clear communication with adults

*Start building stories

Why is this important for us?

We identify how children from their earliest years of life begin to try to communicate, and in the following years they improve their communication skills.
While they grow up, each stage becomes more complex and other factors are added. During these early years, children begin to vocalise by themselves until they are able to interact and communicate in a social environment, such as school.
At this final stage, as future teachers this information is helpful for us in order to identify how the children's language acquisition process is going, and if there is any language disorder or delays.