Subscription Required
A subscription is required to view this content. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing or login to your account.
Language Stage 1
At Stage 1, this person is an emergent communicator. The use of symbolic language for communication is just beginning. Most utterances consist of one word which may serve as a comment or serve as an entire sentence. For example, “More” may represent “I want more now!”
Language Stage 2
At Stage 2, the child begins to combine words to make phrases. The mean (average) length of utterance in stage two is expected to be about 1.75 words. That is, utterances can range from one to possibly 3 words.
Language Stage 3
The person learns to use the smallest units of meaning, called morphemes, to change meaning, such as adding –ing to verbs. Phrases and sentences may not sound grammatically correct because helping verbs are not included at this stage.
Language Stage 4
Sentence form expands with the development of wh questions. The concept of actions that happened in the past is developing, and the person learns to use irregular past tense (verbs that do not end in –ed), such as saw, said, told, and went.
Language Stage 5
They learn to use the articles a and the. The concept of past tense becomes more refined. They learn that some verbs are irregular and don’t use -ed as a past tense ending. All this happens by listening, experimenting, and attending to good models.
Language Stage 6
The person at Stage 6 uses all parts of speech, and has correct word order in sentences.
The Screener allows users to quickly assess the stage of language that their student is in and how to determine when they are ready to move forward to the next stage. The compact report was created in simple easy-to-interpret terms so that inter-rater reliability can be as high as possible. No formal research was completed to determine its effectiveness, but anecdotal trials proved to be almost identical ratings for teachers, classroom assistants, therapists, and parents.
