The document discusses the journey of language development in preschoolers from ages 3 to 6 years old. It covers areas like vocabulary growth, grammar skills, receptive and expressive language milestones, social influences on language, and factors affecting language development. By age 6, children typically have a vocabulary of 2,600 words and can tell stories by looking at pictures. Their grammar is mostly correct by this age as well. Social interactions, cognitive readiness, and biological factors all influence a child's language acquisition process during the preschool years.

1. Journey of Language in
Preschoolers !!
 Preschool period is a time of immense growth in language.
 Vocabulary is expanding, and the semantic and syntactic structure
of their language is becoming more complex.
 Their change in language represents the development of cognitive
abilities.
 Children are becoming more complex thinkers and are curious
about language.

2. Receptive Language
3 years old –
• Follow two-part requests, such as "put your pajamas in the hamper and your
slippers in the closet.” Understand the concept of "two.“
• Learn new words quickly; know most common object names
• Understand gender differences. Know their own full name.
4years old –
• Know the names of colors.
• Understand the difference between things that are the same and things that
are different, such as the difference between children and grown-ups.
• Can follow three-step instructions, such as "Go to the sink, wash your
hands, and dry them on the towel.“
5 years old –
• Understand relationships between objects, such as "the girl who is playing ball"
and "the boy who is jumping rope."

3. Expressive Language
3 years old –
• Begin correctly using plurals, pronouns, and prepositions more consistently.
• Frequently ask "why" and "what."
• Often use complete sentences of 3 to 4 words.
4 years old –
• Use the past tense of words.
• Use sentences of 5 to 6 words.
• Can describe something that has happened to them or tell a short story.
• Can speak clearly enough to be intelligible to strangers almost all of the time.
5 years old –
• Usually can carry on a conversation with another person.
• Often call people (or objects) by their relationship to others, such as "Bobby's
mom" instead of "Mrs. Smith."
• Can define words such as "spoon" and "cat."

4. Promoting Language
Development at Preschool
In preschool your child will be immersed in a world of formal and informal
learning. To determine how well your child’s language ability is
developing, you’ll have to :
• Talk with your child’s teacher about your child’s language and
communication skills and how language skills are taught and reinforced
in the classroom.
• Find out what language skills your child will need to master in order to
have a successful start in kindergarten and what, if any, areas are in
need of improvement.
• Try to determine how your child feels about communicating with his
teacher and classmates. Does he feel confident and successful in his
abilities? Is he frustrated because others don’t seem to understand him?
Does he usually understand what others are saying?

5. MILESTONES
Between 3-4 years –
• Can tell a story
• Has a sentence length of 4-5 words
• Has a vocabulary of nearly 1000 words
• Names at least one color
• Understands "yesterday," "summer", "lunchtime", "tonight", "little-
big"
• Begins to obey requests like "put the block under the chair"
• Knows his or her last name, name of street on which he/she lives
and several nursery rhymes

6. Between 4-5 years –
• Has sentence length of 4-5 words
• Uses past tense correctly
• Has a vocabulary of nearly 1500 words
• Points to colors red, blue, yellow and green
• Identifies triangles, circles and squares
• Understands "In the morning" , "next", "noontime"
• Can speak of imaginary conditions such as "I hope"
• Asks many questions, asks "who?" And "why?“
Between 5-6 years –
• Has a sentence length of 5-6 words
• Has a vocabulary of around 2000 words
• Defines objects by their use (you eat with a fork) and can tell what objects are
made of
• Knows spatial relations like "on top", "behind", "far" and "near"
• Knows her address. Knows common opposites like "big/little"
• Understands "same" and "different“
• Counts ten objects. Distinguished left and right hand in herself

7. Some of the activitieS to encourage child’S
language development
• Talk to your child all day, every day.
engage children in meaningful conversation in which they speak and we respond,
and vice versa
• Name everything.
Avoid using slang or pronouns. So instead of saying "please bring it here" -- say,
"Please bring the book here." Name all the objects in your child's environment in
meaningful ways.
• Answer your child simply, yet completely.
Answer them as simply, yet as completely, as possible. In addition,
when children are doing something, ask them a question.
• Read, read, read.
Reading to your child every day is a MUST. Look at the pictures and discuss what's
shown. Reading helps children develop the rhythm and structure of language as they
learn new words.
• Tell stories.
Storytelling is a great family activity. While showing family photographs, talk about
who is in the photograph, what they are doing, and where they were.

8. AGE VOCABULARY GRAMMER PRAGMATICS
3
YEARS
Vocabulary grows to be
about 900 - 1,000 words
by the time a child is 3
years old.
Begins to use well-
formed sentences that
follow grammer rules.
Begin to use
pronouns,like I, you, me
correctly. Eg- I want ice-
cream.
Knows at least 3
prepositions(in,on ,
under). Eg- I am sleeping
on bed.
They have difficulty in
negative sentences. Eg- I
no go to grandmaa’s
house.
Engage in longer
dialogues.
Assumes the role of
another person in play.
Begins code switching
(simple language)
when talking to very
young children.
Begin using language
for fantasies and
jokes.
Correct others.

9. AGE VOCABULARY GRAMMER PRAGMATICS
4
YEARS
The typical 4 year
old child will have
about 1,500 –
1,600 words
vocabulary.
They are speaking
5-6 words
sentences.
4 year olds are learning
the rules for verbs,
plurals and pronouns.
Eg- we goed to the store
and got some food. Here
child uses ‘goed’
instead of ‘went’.
So ‘kept’ is ‘keeped’ ,
‘children’ is ‘childs’ for a
4 year old child.
Listens attentively to
conversational partner of
age appropriate material.
Makes relevant comments
on familier stories or
events.
Enjoys riddles, funny
stories and jokes with
guessing.

10. AGE VOCABULARY GRAMMER PRAGMATICS
5
YEARS
By the time of 5
years of age child
has a vocabulary of
2,100- 2,200
words.
Child is able to
speak long
sentences of upto
9 words.
Child might have
difficulty using some
speech sounds. Eg-
saying ‘fing’ or ‘thing’ ,
‘den’ or ‘then’.
They might
mispronounce complex
words such as
‘ambulance’ or
‘spaghetti’.
They uses possessive
pronouns (his/her). Eg- I
want his toys.
Changes tones of
voice to adapt to
listeners
perspectives.
Changes moods
rapidly and
unprecictively.
Relies more on
verbal than physical
engagement.

11. AGE VOCABULARY GRAMMER PRAGMATICS
6
YEARS
A 6 year old
typically has 2,600
words expressive
vocabulary (words
he/she says)
Receptive
vocabulary (words
he/she
understands) of
20,000- 24,000
words.
They uses modifier
nouns (which, who,
what, that). Eg- the
book that is red is
mine.
They uses
comaparitive clauses.
Eg- your cookie is
bigger than my
cookie.
Grammer is mostly
correct.
Child is able to tell a
story by looking at
pictures.
Communicate
knowledge about the
world to peers and
adults.
Provide information
that is relevant to the
listener.
Extends on topic.

12. Social influence
• From early on, social factors are influencing child’s
language development.
• Child absorbs what they hear from their parents,
including mom, dad, siblings, or other caregivers as
they develop language skills.
• Children imitate other people and infer meaning
based on it.
• Peers and school environment also help develop
language in children vastly.

13. SOME OF THE FACTORS INFLUENCING
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Cognitive Processes - The way your child processes language
cognitively affects the way her own language develops. How often
your child hears you speak affects her cognitive processes in
learning language. Children who are exposed to an unusually high
proportion of examples of a language form learn at a faster rate
than those who are not.
• Biological readiness – when child is ready to learn then only
language development takes place best. Forcing a child to speak
or learn cannot be of any help. For eg- a child starts speaking
sentenes of 5-6 words only at age of 4 years.

14. MEAN LENGTH UTTERANCE (MLU)
• MLU is a measure of linguistic productivity in children.
It is traditionally calculated by collecting
100 utterances spoken by a child and dividing the
number of morphemes by the number of utterances.
• A higher MLU is taken to indicate a higher level of
language proficiency.
• Mean Length of Utterance is a good marker of language
impairment. It is the number of words or morphemes in
each of their spontaneous utterances.

15. THANK YOU !!
NAME- AASHNA
SECTION- A
ROLL NO. – 05
SEMESTER - IV