North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Language Development and Communication (LDC)

Subdomain: Learning to Communicate

Goal: Children speak audibly and express thoughts, and feelings, and ideas clearly.

Skill Progression: Language production

Age: 12-15 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 12-15 Months.

Unintelligible except for a few words, mostly with consonant-vowel sequence

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant during face-to-face interaction with an adult and during daily routines.

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed.

Behavior Observed

The child communicates with gestures and jargon.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Parents may worry because the child’s sounds are unintelligible. Reassure them that this is a typical phase, the child knows that connected sounds communicate her thoughts. Encourage early childhood educators and parents to accept the child’s unintelligible communications and use context and gestures to interpret meaning. Then model simple words and phrases in relation to what is meant. “That’s your monkey. Do you want it?”

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

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