A recent study by McLeod and Crowe (2018) set out to compare the age of acquisition of speech sounds across languages. A super rad side-benefit of this study was that it generated updated norms for the average age that children master all single speech sounds in English.

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You can download a great handout that shows the average age that children obtain each consonant sound as well as the steps of speech therapy. All 24 consonant sounds (all single sounds, no blends) are grouped into the year which almost all children master that sound (for example, by 5 years and 11 months almost all children master /r/). This is a wonderful tool to use with parents when reviewing a speech assessment and a wonderful way to track a client's progress through the steps. 

 

Take home message: if you work with or have a child in grade 2, they should have zero speech errors. If they do, please seek consultation from a speech-language pathologist. 

 

You can find additional graphics along with the full article (for free!) here. 

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Thank you to Larissa Wilson, speech-language pathology volunteer student, for compiling the handout.

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