What strategies do children use in learning language?
All human beings, young and old, follow two kinds of learning strategy. One, drawing on physical ability, is that we learn in stages (we make sure we can walk before we run). The other, drawing on intellectual ability, is that we generalize from past experience (if you see an insect that you never saw before and that looks like a cockroach you're likely to think it may be a cockroach). These strategies help us explain child productions in the whole of language, from pronunciation through vocabulary and grammar to skills like how to hold a conversation. The following examples deal with pronunciation and word learning because they concern the most common questions received at Ask-a-Linguist. In what follows, we give only rough guidelines for the ages associated with particular stages of development. As said above, a child's physical and cognitive progress is best assessed against the child itself, so that specific age ranges matter less than the child's progress from one stage to the next. Resources detailing milestones in overall child development are included at the end of this article.