October 11, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving from Wise Owl Speech! I love this cute meme which seems appropriate given that it is about comprehension, and it is Thanksgiving in Canada and soon will be in the United States.  As a speech-language pathologist, I can see that there are a couple of things going on here, but mainly that there are different meanings for the phrase “having turkey for dinner!” English is fun like that! So many words and phrases can have different meanings, which is one of the reasons English is so hard to learn.

Language comprehension is a critical component of successful communication and it involves many different aspects all working together, such as hearing, listening, attention, memory, language processing, vocabulary, sentence structure, and context. So complicated! No wonder many children prone to learning difficulties have language comprehension challenges. Language comprehension is an area I frequently target with my preschool clients. Building comprehension is extremely beneficial for so many other skills, and for children to learn successfully in school.

Since comprehension of oral language is the foundation for all other aspects of successful communication, such as oral language expression, reading and writing, what should parents look for in their young children? When does comprehension start to develop?

I’m sure that it is no surprise that language comprehension begins to develop at birth. The early stages involve such behaviors as responding to voices and sound at 1 month of age and responding differently to angry voices versus pleasant voices by age 3 to 5 months. But then, language comprehension seems to explode, as young babies of 8 months are able to understand “no” and their own names, and “bye-bye” by age 9 months. By 11- 12 months of age, most children are able to follow simple instructions, such as “get your shoes” or “give that to me”. By age 3 to 4 years, children understand up to 1500 words and complex sentences, and by age 5 to 6 years, 2500-2800 words and very complicated sentences. Once school-aged, a child starts to learn and be able to talk about language itself, such as the fact that words can have different meanings, depending on the context, even though they sound the same and have the same spelling.

If you have concerns about your child’s comprehension, please get your child’s hearing checked and have him or her seen for a complete speech and language assessment by a qualified speech-language pathologist. Early intervention is critical for helping your child catch up to peers. For more information on language development and the development of comprehension, please check out Speech-Language and Audiology Canada (SAC) and the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA).

Thanks for reading and enjoy Thanksgiving!

Cindy McCallum, M.Sc., R.SLP, SLP(C), CCC-SLP

Registered Speech-Language Pathologist

Founder, WiseOwlSpeech