Hi everyone!
šHappy Augustš
As school starts drifting into our minds again, we start thinking about the coming year. One day as I was doing just that I started doing a little research on language acquisition and came across this Table. (Note. From Language Disorders From Infants Through Adolescence: Assessment and Intervention, by R. Paul, 2001, Philadelphia)
As I read through it I started comparing it to the language levels of the ELD matrix. It was very interesting to compare native language acquisition according to the below table against second language acquistion by language level.
If you are interested in doing the same here is a link to the ELD matrix.
Table 1 Milestones of Language Content
Typical Age Content Milestones
8ā12 mos. Understand 3ā50 words.
First words are used for names of familiar people and objects; communicative games and routines; to talk about appearance,
disappearance, recurrence.
12ā18 mos. Average expressive vocabulary size: 50ā100 words at 18 mos.
Semantic roles are expressed in one-word speech, including agent, action, object, location, possession, rejection, disappearance, nonexistence, denial.
Words are understood outside of routine games; still need contextual support for lexical comprehension.
18ā24 mos. Average expressive vocabulary size: 200ā300 words at 24 mos.
Prevalent relations expressed: agentāaction, agentāobject, actionāobject, actionālocation, entityālocation, possessorāpossession, demonstrativeāentity, attributeāentity.
24ā30 mos. Understanding and use of questions about objects (What?), people (Who?), and basic events(What is x doing? Where is x going?).
30ā36 mos. Use and understand Why? questions.
Use and understand basic spatial terms (in, on, under, etc.).
36ā42 mos. Use and understand semantic relationship between adjacent and conjoined sentences,including additive, temporal, causal, contrastive.
Understand basic color words. Use and understand basic kinship terms.
42ā48 mos. Use and understand āāwhenāā and āāhowāā questions.
Understand words for basic shapes (circle, square, triangle).
Use and understand basic size vocabulary (big, small).
Use conjunctions and and because to conjoin sentences.
48ā60 mos. Knowledge of letter names and sounds emerges.
Knowledge of numbers and counting emerges.
Use conjunctions when, so, because, and if.
5ā7 years Reorganization of lexical knowledge from episodic to semantic networks occurs.
Average expressive vocabulary size: 5,000 words.
7ā9 years School introduces new words not encountered in conversation.
Pronouns used anaphorically to refer to nouns previously named.
Word definitions include synonyms and categories. Some words understood to have multiple meanings.
Capacity for production of figurative language increases.
9ā12 years Vocabulary in school texts is more abstract and specific than that in conversation.
Students are expected to acquire new information from written texts.
Can explain relationships between meanings of multiple-meaning words.
Begin using adverbial conjunctions. Understand most common idioms.
12ā14 years Abstract dictionary definitions given for words.
Can explain meaning of proverbs in context.
15ā18 years Average vocabulary size of high school graduate: 10,000 words.
Note. From Language Disorders From Infants Through Adolescence: Assessment and Intervention, by R. Paul, 2001, Philadelphia:
šHappy Teaching!
