We continue to review the most important aspects of language development in the child after seeing the enormous advance that occurs during the period of three to four years.
Now is the turn of the stage that goes four to five years, where we continue to appreciate how the repertoire of our son's sounds is more similar to ours, as well as the complexity of the phrases he elaborates or the broad vocabulary he is counting on.
This stage is characterized in that the child will begin to develop certain strategies that will make him aware that the phrases can be divided into simpler elements, which are the words, and that these, in turn, can be segmented into syllables. This is very important for the subsequent learning of reading and writing.
Expressive language
He expressive language of the children continues an evolutionary line that makes each time their verbal emissions are more complex and elaborate, which will allow them to be able to count a greater number of things more easily. It will not be necessary for the adult to have to guess what their child wants to say, since he has the necessary tools to give the relevant information.
His repertoire of phonemes is gradually being completed, and the sounds he was able to pronounce in the previous stage (/ b /, / p /, / t /, / g /, / k /, / f /, / j / , / ch /, / m /, / n /, / ñ /, / l /, / d / and / r /), the sounds / z / and / s / are now added. In addition, he is now able to perform the symphons of / consonant + l / (nail, Paul, church ...) without any problem.
Thanks to its articular maturity, each time it should produce fewer errors in regard to phonemes. In the event that our child had a speech problem, it would be more evident and easy to detect, being necessary to go to a specialist to confirm or deny our initial suspicion.
As I said at the beginning, it is between four and five years old when our child acquires the necessary awareness to recognize, within a sentence, the different words that form it. Thus, we may be surprised to observe how the subject, the verb or the complement of a sentence of up to three words is capable of omitting. Or even able to compare sentences identifying one of which has a word that is different.
In the same way that it is able to separate the words of a sentence, as it develops this metalinguistic ability You will be able to go one step further and identify up to four syllables within a word. And even further, at the end of this stage you can even discriminate vowels in the initial syllable position or say with what sound a word we say begins.
All this will be complemented by a more varied use of adjectives, pronouns, adverbs and prepositions within their spontaneous language. For example, our child will begin to use the adverbs of time before, now and after, to use statements that the conjunctions "o / u" (Do we eat meat or fish?) and negative "ni" (I don't want ice cream or cake) or statements containing the possessive pronouns "mine" and "yours" with their variants of gender and number ("mine", "yours ..."). You can make sentences that carry the interrogative particles "which", "how much", "why" and "to whom" or use discursive connectors (such as "and", "besides", "but", "because ...")
His sentences are getting longer, becoming elaborate for up to eight words, using composite structures (for example: "Mom puts the washing machine and dad makes dinner"). In addition, the use of verb tenses is also becoming increasingly precise, since it correctly uses the verbs in the present and makes statements that imply the idea of the future and the past.
His vocabulary develops in contact with the context of his daily life which, together with a better use of linguistic elements, makes him possess a sequenced and orderly relationship of events, which will help the interlocutor to better understand his speech. Also, this will help you to have greater cohesion (relate several speeches correctly) and coherence (focus on a topic that responds to our knowledge of the world) discursive, making what you tell us make sense.
Finally, the use of language becomes increasingly complex. It is a very important aspect, since knowing the internal states of the person with whom we are talking (for example, if our son tells us what he has done in school, he must take into account that we have not been able to see him , so you should keep it in mind and give us more information; on the contrary, if you are telling us what you played in the park the other day, while we were with him, not much information will be necessary). In addition, little by little he is able to respect the taking of turns in the interaction with others, maintaining the proposed topic of conversation, respecting the conversational rules between equals.
Comprehensive language
The understanding Above all that surrounds you will also experience a breakthrough. Our little one can follow more complex orders, and identify complex objects or actions in an image, you can even guess a spoiled action or the name of an element after hearing its definition.
Also, you can define an element and find at least two similarities or two differences between two things. You can also tell us the correct opposite in an analogy (for example: "the opposite of handsome is ...", "an elephant is big and a mouse is ..."). Also, thanks to this, you can identify and explain "absurd" in drawings (a dog with wheels instead of legs, a man who puts the glasses upside down ...).
Conclusion
It is clear that language development in children between the ages of four and five It is a great linguistic advance and will be very useful in all areas of your life. But this does not end here, because in the coming years our children will also develop more strategies that will end up talking like us.
