Language development significantly contributes to a child’s overall development as it helps one think, speak, write, express thoughts, and understand. Primarily, language creates the foundation for all kinds of communication. A delay in language development may result in frustration and miscommunication (Otto 46). Therefore, parents should pay special attention to fostering language skills so that a child could exchange information with others in an understandable manner.
Language is not merely a speech but a set of standards that presumes comprehension behind words, phrases, and sentences. Therefore, children must develop language and speech recognition skills to communicate with their parents and peers and adapt to society. It was scientifically established that children who interacted much with their parents had high performance in many areas (Barrett). However, the training process takes years; by 12 months, babies can recognize sounds by three years may use the amount of available vocabulary, and by five years, they can coherently speak using short sentences.
As children start to learn new words, they understand the concepts. For instance, if they know the word “cat,” they may overextend its use and call any animal a cat. However, as they encounter more cats, they build up underlying concepts of the notion. What is more, children acquire reading skills as a part of language development. It helps perform better at school, evoke imagination and comprehension, and expands horizons of consciousness. Moreover, enlarged vocabulary has proved to be efficient for creativity, world perception, and learning new languages (McCauley and Christiansen 19). Having a structured approach to language acquisition will also contribute to overall progress at other development stages and provide more opportunities later in life.
Works Cited
Barrett, Martyn. The Development of Language. Psychology Press, 2016.
McCauley, Stewart, and Morten Christiansen. “Language Learning as Language Use: A Cross-Linguistic Model of Child Language Development.” Psychological Review, vol. 126, no. 1, 2019, 1–51.
Otto, Beverly. Language Development in Early Childhood Education. Pearson, 2017.