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Receptive and Expressive Language Milestones
| Age |
Receptive Language |
Expressive Language |
0-12
months |
- Responds to name by turning or stopping activity
- Responds to "no" most of the time
- Follows simple commands occasionally (e.g. stop, come here, go bye-bye)
- Attends to pictures and objects mentioned in conversation
|
- Babbles with early consonant sounds /p,b,m,t,d,n/
- Imitates sounds, syllables and non-speech sounds
- Waves 'hi' and 'bye-bye'
- Points to objects
- Says 'mama' or 'dada' meaningfully
- Emergence of first words/approximations between 9 and 15 months
|
12-24
months |
- Identifies body parts on self
- Finds familiar objects not in immediate sight
- Retrieves objects from another room
- Identifies pictures when named
- Follows 2 step related directions
|
- Shakes head 'no'
- Sings vocally or verbally
- Imitates new words frequently
- Uses 50 different words
- Imitates 2-3 word combinations
- Asks "what's that?"
- Begins to combine 2-words together
|
24-36
months |
- Understands early concepts for size, quantity, color and location
- Understands and responds to yes/no and simple what, where, who questions
- Identifies objects by function
|
- Uses 2-3 word phrases often
- Uses early pronouns (I, me)
- Early grammatical structures appear (present progressive -ing, plural -s)
- Counts to 3
- Begins to name colors
- States own name
- Uses size word and some early prepositions (on, in)
|
36-48
months |
- Understands between 1,500 and 2,000 words
- Comprehends more concepts for size, quantity, location and temporality
- Follows 2-3 step unrelated directions
- Understands simple what, where, who, why questions
|
- Uses 800+ words
- Sentence length continues to expand
- Asks simple what, where, who questions
- Uses regular past tense
- Uses third person pronouns (he, she, they)
- Relates/tells a simple story
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