Talking 5-7 years
Talking 5-7 years
This is a guide to how children develop talking and their understanding of words between 5 and 7 years.
Often by 5 or 6 years, children have good speech and language skills. They are better at using language in different ways e.g. discussing ideas or giving opinions.
Children develop skills at different rates, but beyond 5 years, usually children will:
- Focus on one thing for longer without being reminded
- Rely less on pictures and objects to learn new words
- Use their language skills in learning to read, write and spell
- Learn that the same word can mean two things, such as 'orange' the fruit and 'orange' the colour
- Learn that different words can mean the same thing such as ’minus’ and ‘take away’
- Understand feelings and descriptive words like 'carefully', 'slowly' or 'clever'
- Use language for different purposes such as asking questions or persuading
- Share and discuss more complex ideas Use language in a range of social situations.
How to support your child
There are lots of things you can do to encourage children at this stage:
- Help them to learn new words, such as words to do with positions, times and size.
- Make time to talk about your day
- Give a child time to talk to you
- Ask open questions like ‘tell me something you liked about today’.
Things to look out for
A child at this age should have well-developed speech and language skills. If they are finding language difficult, you might notice that they:
- Find it hard to learn and understand the meanings of words
- Find it hard to understand language about things in the past or future
- Struggle to understand phrases that can mean more than one thing, such as 'pull your socks up'
- Respond to just part of an instruction, usually the beginning or end
- Use short sentences, often with words missing or in the wrong order
- Find it hard to make up stories. This shows in written work as well as talking
- Are not learning at school, but nobody can explain why
- Are struggling to make and keep friends.
Helpful resources
