Ever wondered whether your child is saying enough words for their age, or whether what they’re saying is as clear as it’s suppose to be? It can be difficult to pick up whether a child has a speech delay, as mistakes like “bunny wabbit’ can often sound cute and are very common in younger children, making it hard to know when they should be speaking clearly. Below is a rough guide to how clear a child’s speech should be and how extensive their vocabulary should be at different age milestones.
Twelve months
At the twelve-month mark, most children have produced their first word, which is often something short like ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ so is most likely quite clear. Their vocabulary at this age is normally around one to eight words.
One to two years
An infant’s vocab then starts to grow slowly at first but then rapidly as they approach two years. At fifteen months they are expected to produce ten words, at a year and a half, they have roughly fifty words and at two years of age, they have around one to two hundred words. Between one and a half and two years of age, we should be able to understand twenty five to fifty percent of the words they produce.
Two to three years
At two and a half years, children often produce an average of four hundred and fifty words and by three years, this figure increases all the way up to one thousand words. Their speech also becomes much clearer, with fifty to seventy five percent of their speech being clear and understandable.
Three to four years
Children that are three and a half have an expressive vocabulary of one thousand, two hundred words. At 4 years, their expressive vocabulary is, on average, around one thousand, six hundred words.
Four to five years
At four and a half years children can produce one thousand, nine hundred words and anywhere between two thousand, two hundred and two thousand, five hundred words by five years of age. Their speech should be seventy five to ninety percent clear between four and five years.
Five and over
By six years of age, children can produce anywhere between two and a half thousand to seven thousand words and by 12 years of age they have a vocab of roughly fifty thousand words. After the age of five, their speech should be ninety to one hundred percent clear and intelligible.
Contact us for results focused speech therapy
This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you require treatment for a child who has difficulties with speech, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today!
