This page is all about 5 year old speech and language skills. Keep in mind that these milestones are based on research about typically-developing children but this information is not meant to diagnose a speech-language delay or disorder. There is a wide range of “normal” and even if your child is slightly delayed in a few of these areas, it doesn’t necessarily mean he or she has a speech or language delay. Please contact a speech-language pathologist for a screening if you are concerned about your child’s speech and language skills. All norms are taken from the Linguisystems Guide to Communication Milestones which sites the specific resources and research articles used to find each milestone.
Speech Sound Development
By this age, your child should be able to consistently make the following sounds correctly:
-/p/, /b/, /m/, /h/, /n/, /w/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /d/, /f/, “y”
Your child’s speech should be understood by a stranger about 90% of the time.
Grammatical Markers
Your child should be correctly using most of the following grammatical markers:
- Pronouns:
– I, me, you, he, she, him, her, we, us, they, them
How to teach the pronouns “he” and “she”
- Possessive Pronouns:
– My, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, our, ours, their, theirs - Other pronouns like:
– myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves - “-ing” on the end of verbs
How to Teach Present Progressive “-ing”
- Plural -s (The apples)
- Possessive -s (Mommy‘s ball)
- Past tense verbs (jumped, ran, etc.)
- Regular third person singular (he jumps, she runs)
- Articles (the ball, a banana)
How to Teach Articles “the” and “a”
- The conjunction “and”
How to Teach the Conjunction “And”
- Helping verbs such as “to be”, “to do”, and “to have”, including contractions (such as “that‘s my ball”, “I’ll do that”, and “I have two”)
Your child should also be producing sentences with an average length of 4.5 words/morphemes or more.
How to Increase Sentence Length
Pragmatic Skills
Your child should be interacting with other people in most of the following ways:
- Follows three-step directions without cues
Teach a Child to Follow Directions
- Uses direct requests with justification (“Stop that, you’re hurting me.”)
- Uses words to invite others to play
Social Skill Activities for Preschoolers
- Uses language to resolve disputes with peers
- Plays competitive exercise games (with help from adults)
- Can hold a basic conversation
Teach a Child to Stay on Topic
- Speaks of imaginary conditions, such as “What if…” and “I hope…”
Literacy/Book Skills
Your child should be using books in most of the following ways:
- Understands story sequence (what comes first, next, last)
- Understands the function and purpose of print
- Knows many letter names
- Uses more letter-like forms that scribbles
- Is developing phonological awareness and pre-reading skills:
The Ultimate Guide to Phonological Awareness and Pre-Reading Skills
Concept Development
Your child should have an understanding of most of the following concepts:
- Understands comparative and superlative adjectives, such as “big”, “bigger”, and “biggest”
- Understands time concepts yesterday, today, tomorrow, first, then, next, days of the week, last week, next week
- Understands different, nearest, through, thin, whole
- Identifies positional concepts first, middle, last
How to Teach a Spatial Concept
Vocabulary Development
Your child should have a vocabulary of about 2,200-2,500 words. We don’t recommend you try to count all of them, this should just give you a rough estimate!
Questions
Your child should be able to use questions in most of the following ways:
- Answers a variety of questions, including “yes/no”, “what”, “who”, “where”, “why”, “how”, “when”, and “how many” (as long as there are only a few things)
- Asks “what”, “where”, “when”, “how”, “whose” and one-word “why” questions
- Asks “is” questions (like “what is this?” and “is she crying?”)
Listening Skills
Your child should be doing most of the following listening skills:
- Attends to a short story and answers simple questions about it
Answering Questions Resource Page
- Hears and understands most of what is said at home and in school
- Repeats four digits when they are given slowly
- Readily follows simple commands involving remote objects (such as “go to your room and get your blue shoes and bring them here”)
Teach a child to follow directions
More Information
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i have a question for the experts! My granddaughter is five years old next month she cannot say her asses yet. Is that something to be concerned about? She starts school next fall