Jul 29 2007
Language Development in Middle Childhood
Language development progresses quite rapidly in the school age child. A 6 year old may have a repertoire of words anywhere from 8,000 to 14,000 words but, by age 11 that will increase by an average of 5,000 words. Gains in grammar can also be seen as the child begins to use more instances of passive voice (like “The cat was fed by Grace†instead of “Grace fed the catâ€) and conditional sentences (as in “If Aidan cleans up the toys, I will clean up the crayons.â€). They begin to understand syntax, or sentence structure, much more clearly. Difficult phonemes such as j, v, th, and zh are developed during middle childhood as well. The school age child becomes more skilled in using pragmatics, or the rules of conversation. School age children still have trouble deciphering the meaning of a sentence that is based on the intonation of the words.
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It is amazing that children have such a capacity to learn speech. The particulars of that include more than the complexities of proper grammar, but the ability to learn dialectical speech as well. My daughter can write and speak very properly when having conversations with adults. Her speech with her friends is more slangy and casual. In all cultures, with all languages, there is a formal method of speaking and a casual method of speech. It is amazing that children as young as my daughter can figure it out. It is not a matter of stringing together words, but using them in the appropriate context for a situation.