This article will elaborate on current situation and suggestions of Chinese developmental language disorders in young children.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, the current population of children aged 0-14 in China exceeds 250 million. The development of language ability is a lifelong task for humans, and the critical period for this ability development is in childhood.
China started relatively late in the research field of children’s language development, especially their listening and speaking abilities, and the scientific research efforts are correspondingly insufficient.
In the age range of 0-8 years old, there are multiple milestone nodes, marking a new stage in children’s language ability. Children’s language ability mainly involves the following aspects: phonetics, grammar, and pragmatics.
The first milestone is when children say their first meaningful word. This milestone usually occurs around 12 months after the child is born. In the pre language stage prior to this, the pragmatic abilities of several months old infants emerged, demonstrating the ability to interact with parents or primary caregivers and respond to certain commands.
At around 6 months, parents can observe the sprouting of a child’s speech ability, and at this point, the baby begins to babble and make sounds similar to speech, ready to truly speak the first word.
The second milestone roughly occurs between the ages of 1 and a half to 2, when the child has mastered approximately 50-100 vocabulary words and learned to put the two words together, such as “Mom hugging”.
At this stage, children express richer and more diverse meanings through language, and are able to convey communicative intentions such as questions, protests, and requests.
Around the age of 3, children’s vocabulary development enters an “explosive period”, with their expressive vocabulary increasing from hundreds to thousands. Around the age of 5, Chinese speaking children can speak approximately 2000-2500 words.
At the age of 3-5, children are able to master the vast majority of Chinese initials, vowels, and tones, with continuous improvement in speech clarity. At the same time, their grammar abilities are rapidly developing. They speak longer sentences with more complete and complex syntactic structures.
Children aged 4-5 are able to utter complete sentences containing 7-10 words, produce quantitative structures, master sentence structures such as negative, passive, interrogative, and relative clauses, and frequently use “then” to connect sentences.
Children’s narrative ability usually begins to develop at this stage, demonstrating the ability to narrate their experiences in chronological order, telling and retelling simple stories.
Developmental language disorder refers to a significant obstacle in language understanding and expression, with some children experiencing only one aspect of language understanding or expression, while others experiencing both. Children may have obstacles in syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics.
The specific manifestations vary from person to person, and common manifestations include small vocabulary, short average sentence length, inability to understand instructions given by adults, etc.
Some studies have shown that compared to normal children, Chinese developmental language disorders in young children in early childhood have a higher unemployment rate during their growth.
The above scientific research results indicate that delayed language development in children should be given early attention.
In terms of talent cultivation, the “14th Five Year Plan” emphasizes the importance of cultivating a special education teacher team and proposes to “strengthen the construction of special education teacher teams”.
In addition to increasing efforts to cultivate full-time teachers, the action plan also requires “organizing and conducting training for all principals and teachers of special education schools and regular schools, and incorporating integrated education into the compulsory content of continuing education for regular school teachers”.
On this basis, we suggest that in the next stage of the plan, the important position of language ability development should be further highlighted: firstly, in terms of talent cultivation, the professional fields of special education teachers should be refined, and professional literacy should be improved.
Courses such as “Linguistics” and “Language Intervention” should be included in the training curriculum of special education teachers.
Secondly, in terms of school curriculum, promote the establishment of specialized language proficiency enhancement courses in special education schools and regular schools.
Thirdly, it is recommended that relevant departments take the lead in promoting cooperation between university researchers conducting research on language barriers and interventions, as well as special education schools, classrooms, and frontline teachers.
By combining theory with practice, we can improve the quality of language intervention courses while continuously improving the professional level of special education.
The developmental language barrier of Chinese developmental language disorders in young children deserves our high attention. At present, China has begun to promote the establishment of job standards for “rehabilitation therapists”.
On this basis, we suggest that: firstly, the government actively promotes the standardization of professional standards for rehabilitation practitioners and advocates for professional refinement.
Secondly, policies should be introduced to develop language and speech therapy majors, referring to mature training processes and plans (such as undergraduate and master’s education at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and improving professional talent training mechanisms.
Finally, at the policy level, supporting the talent introduction of speech and language therapists can not only solve the current “urgent need” for professional practitioners, but also provide assistance for the subsequent talent cultivation.