Developmental Speech and Language Norms for Spanish and English

These charts provides a quick reference for speech development in children. They include all consonant sounds in English as well as Spanish and the age at which children are expected to master those sounds.

Teachers can use this as a guide to determine whether the errors their students are making are age appropriate or whether they should refer their student for a speech evaluation.

Speech-language pathologists can use this guide to have conversations with teachers and parents regarding speech sound development.

The concept supporting this framework is simple: In general terms, if sounds or structures exist in both languages, they should not be affected in second language production; if sounds or structures do not exist in both languages, the influence of one language on another can be expected. The goal then is to understand the different sound systems and structures of a language in order to identify which errors are of true concern.

This document contains updated, expanded, and brand new research on sound and language development. Portions of these charts have collectively been downloaded over 20,000 times from our website, have been used in the publication of eight books, and have been shared in national and international presentations, 43 of which have become online professional development courses. These accomplishments would be meaningless if it weren’t for the 300-500 children our team accurately assesses each year. Weekly, we hear from people like you that these resources have helped them do the same. Because we have chosen to share what we do, our hundreds of students have turned into your thousands of students, and we couldn’t be happier.