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 participate in conversations with peers and adults in one-on-one, small, and larger group interactions.

Skill Progression: Participate in conversations with peers and adults

Age: 18-21 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 18-21 Months.

Attempts to converse with jargon and real words

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child in solitary play and in play interactions with others and/or during daily routines with the adult.

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed except for asking the name of an object.

Behavior Observed

The child responds to others’ comments and questions with words (mostly nouns) mixed with some jargon.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Jargon and words together may be difficult to comprehend. Encourage early childhood educators and parents to listen for key words and look at the child’s gestures and the context for the communication. This may help adults understand the child’s intent.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.