Nursery World - Home learning - A parent's guide to ... speech

How does a child move from babbling to mastering the sounds and
sequences of a language? Penny Tassoni explains the processs.

It takes most children four or so years to master talking. One of the important parts of learning to talk is the ability to make the sounds that form words. This starts in the first year of life and continues for up to seven years.

Here, we offer some advice about a child's journey from babbling to talking clearly.

FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TALKING

1. 'Speech' has a particular meaning

While most people use the words 'speech', 'talk' and 'language' interchangeably, the term 'speech' actually relates to the sounds that children are able to make when talking. Interestingly, the number of sounds that are needed to speak a language varies. English has more than 40 different sounds.

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