Speech sound development begins when babies utter their first sounds and continues through early elementary years. As children model adult speech and develop their own sound repertoire, their speech production can include omissions of sounds, substitutions of one sound for another, and inconsistent productions of sounds.
Shirberg reviewed the research on speech development and offered the following widely accepted developmental sequence for speech sounds:
Early 8 Sounds
Emerging Development between 1-3 years with consistent production of these sounds by 3 years.
Middle 8 Sounds
Emerging development between 3-6 ½ with consistent production of these sounds by 5 ½
/t/ as in “two”
/k/ as in “cup”
/g/ as in “go”
/f/ as in “fish”
/v/ as in “van”
/ch/ as in “chew”
/j/ as in “jump”
Late 8 Sounds
Emerging Development Between ages 5 -7 with Consistent production of these sounds by 7
/sh/ as in “sheep”
/s/ as in “see”
/th/ as in “think”
/th/ as in “that”
/r/ as in “red”
/z/ as in “zoo”
/l/ as in “like”
/zh/ as in “measure”
Shirberg reviewed the research on speech development and offered the following widely accepted developmental sequence for speech sounds:
Early 8 Sounds
Emerging Development between 1-3 years with consistent production of these sounds by 3 years.
- /m/ as in “mama”
- /b/ as in “baby”
- /y/ as in “you”
- /n/ as in “no”
- /w/ as in “we”
- /d/ as in “daddy”
- /p/ as in “pop”
- /h/ as in “hi”
Middle 8 Sounds
Emerging development between 3-6 ½ with consistent production of these sounds by 5 ½
/t/ as in “two”
/k/ as in “cup”
/g/ as in “go”
/f/ as in “fish”
/v/ as in “van”
/ch/ as in “chew”
/j/ as in “jump”
Late 8 Sounds
Emerging Development Between ages 5 -7 with Consistent production of these sounds by 7
/sh/ as in “sheep”
/s/ as in “see”
/th/ as in “think”
/th/ as in “that”
/r/ as in “red”
/z/ as in “zoo”
/l/ as in “like”
/zh/ as in “measure”
The chart below offers a second way to look at speech sound development, one phoneme at a time.
Just looking at this chart can be a little misleading. The far left end of each black bar represents the age at which 50% of children mastered the sound, and the far right edge of each bar represents the age at which 90% of children mastered each sound. For example, with /f/ you can see that 50% of children mastered the sound by age 2.5, while 90% of children had mastered it by age 4. The length of some of these bars helps to illustrate how different kids really are and how wide the range of normal or typical development really is.
Just as we need to understand their is a wide range of normal, we need to make sure we are not waiting until the last minute to provide help for kids with speech delays or disabilites. Thus, it is not ideal to wait until 90% of a child's peers has mastered a sound before giving them the needed extra help.
Just as we need to understand their is a wide range of normal, we need to make sure we are not waiting until the last minute to provide help for kids with speech delays or disabilites. Thus, it is not ideal to wait until 90% of a child's peers has mastered a sound before giving them the needed extra help.
Typical Articulation Development
Intelligibility norms vary, but as a general rule of thumb:
by 18 months a typically developing child’s speech is normally 25% intelligible;
by 24 months it is 50-75% intelligible,
by 36 months it is 75-100% intelligible.