Language Development

In early-stage English language development, children:

• Use nonverbal communication, such as gestures or behaviors, to seek attention, request objects, or initiate a response from others
• Use age-appropriate vocabulary in the home language
• Listen and converse in their home language
• Use age-appropriate grammar in their home language
• Ask a variety of  questions (e.g., “what,” “why,” “how,” “when,” and “where”) in their home language
• Use simple English expressions that are phonetically correct but may be inappropriate to the context of the conversation or the situation (pragmatically inappropriate; e.g., missing social, contextual, or self-referential cues)

In mid-stage English language development, children:

• Combine nonverbal with some verbal communication to be understood by others
• Codeswitch (insert a home language word into an English sentence to get the point across when they don’t know the word in English)
• Use telegraphic speech (two-word phrases rather than full sentences, such as “want food”)
• Use formulaic speech (expressions that are learned whole, e.g., “I don’t know”)
• Use English vocabulary that mainly consists of concrete nouns and some verbs and pronouns
• Converse with others in English using two or three words at a time but switch back and forth between English and their home language
• Use some English grammatical markers (e.g., “-ing” or the plural-forming “-s”) and apply at times the rules of grammar of the home language to English
• Use “what” and “why” questions in English, sometimes with errors

In late-stage English language development, children:

• Demonstrate increasing reliance on verbal communication in English to be understood by others
  
• Use new English vocabulary to share knowledge of concepts, including conversational and academic vocabulary
• Sustain a conversation in English with increasingly complex syntax, adding conjunctions, subject-verb-object patterns, and other more advanced elements of English sentence construction
• Expand their use of different forms of grammar in English (e.g., plurals; possessive pronouns; simple past-tense verbs), sometimes with errors
• Use “what,” “why,” “how,” “when,” and “where” questions in more complete forms in English, sometimes with errors