• Use a limited number of sounds in their words –  often these are p, b, d, m, n
• Speech may not be clear
• Children will also often miss the ends off words at this stage.
• Children tend to substitute sounds for those that are easier to say, e.g. car becomes tar, sun becomes tun

2

YEARS

• Speech is becoming clearer and mostly intelligibile
• Most sounds are in use, new sounds emerging are ch, j, sh, v,l, z
• Many children will shorten longer words, such as  saying ‘nana’ instead of ‘banana’
• Some sound substitutions are still evident especially with sounds such as th and r.
• They may also  have difficulty where lots of sounds happen  together in a word, e.g. they may say ‘pider’  instead of ‘spider’

4

YEARS

• Uses most sounds effectively
• Speech is intelligible
• Complicated words may still be difficult to produce
• May find r and th difficult to produce up until around 6 years old

5

YEARS