Free course

How do children learn language?

This course explores a remarkable human journey: in a few short years children progress from babbling and uttering single words to stringing sentences together and holding conversations. They begin to use language to understand others, to change the world around them, and to tell the story of their own lives. It is a journey that begins while they are still in the womb and sees astonishing change in the first years of life. Drawing on the latest research from psychology, anthropology and neuroscience, this free course reveals the secrets of how children acquire the power, subtlety and complexity of language.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

describe how children's language develops
explain how children learn sounds, words and grammar
compare language learning in different languages and cultures
identify the social and cognitive foundations of language development
understand the reasons children's language develops differently.

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First Published: 25/11/2025

Updated: 25/11/2025

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Course content

- Introduction and guidance
- Current section:
  Introduction and guidance
  This course explores a remarkable human journey: in a few short years children progress from babbling and uttering single words to stringing sentences together and holding conversations. They begin to use language to understand others, to change the world around them, and to tell the story of their own lives. It is a journey that begins while they are still in the womb and sees astonishing change in the first years of life. Drawing on the latest research from psychology, anthropology, and ...
- What is a badged course?
  - How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- Session1Session 1: Making the ordinary extraordinary
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Welcome to Session 1 of this free course, How do children learn language? We use language every day to communicate our thoughts and to understand others. But there was a time in our lives when we knew no language at all. Millions of babies are in the same position today, yet like us they will go on to acquire the extraordinary gift of language. How do they do it? How did we do it? Throughout this course you are going to find out. This first session will make the ordinary extraordinary. We ...
- 1 What are we trying to explain?
- 2 Language development from an infant’s perspective
- 3 Where are the words?
- 4 What do words mean?
- 5 What can I say?
- 6 Why does language development matter?
- 7 Language acquisition as skill acquisition
- 8 This session’s quiz
- 9 Summary of Session 1
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session 1 practice quiz
- Session2Session 2: The social foundations of language learning
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In the previous session you started to think about language development from the infant’s perspective. This raised your awareness of the learning challenges they face and the remarkable ways they overcome them. In this session you will continue to consider what is important in the world of infants, paying special attention to their early social experiences. Amazingly, these experiences start even before birth when babies listen to language in the womb. Once born, children start to engage in ...
- 1 Early learning centre
- 2 Face-to-face interaction
- 3 Joint attention and common ground
- 4 Imitation and norms
- 5 Pointing and gesturing
- 6 This session’s quiz
- 7 Summary of Session 2
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Session 2 practice quiz
- Session3Session 3: The birth of language
- Current section:
  Introduction
  The previous session of this course concentrated on the social foundations of language acquisition. With infants now able to imitate and engage others, they become much more active in their communications. In this session you will follow their linguistic development from the advent of babbling to their first words; explore the neural coordination and articulatory gymnastics required to shape vowels and consonants in the mouth; and llearn about sign language development and the role that ...
- 1 Vocalisations and babbling
- 2 From brain to lungs to lips
- 3 Sign languages
- 4 Child Directed Speech
- 5 First words
- 6 Small to big, and big to small
- 7 This session’s quiz
- 8 Summary of Session 3
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Session 3 practice quiz
- Session4Session 4: Comprehending and producing language
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In the previous session, you learned about babbling,first words, sign language and speech production. You also explored the role of Child Directed Speech (CDS) in shaping children’s early language use. Now children are contributors to the conversation, we need to consider the relation between language production and comprehension. You’ll take a brief pause to consider what makes a good theory of language acquisition, which introduces you to the transactional way of thinking about development...
- 1 Comprehension and production
- 2 Multilingualism and siblings
- 3 Models of development
- 4 The meaning of words
- 5 Caregivers’ role in meaning making
- 6 Reformulations
- 5 This session’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Session 4
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session 4 compulsory badge quiz
- Session5Session 5: Putting words together
- Current section:
  Introduction
  As children start to put words together into multi-word utterances, they are presented with a fresh challenge. Knowing what each individual word means is not enough – they need to learn how meaning emerges from the combination of words. The difference in meaning between ‘dog bites man’ and ‘man bites dog’ does not lie in the words themselves, but in the who-does-what-to whom, the subject, the verb and the object. Word order is part of a wider system of conventions on how to assemble smaller ...
- 1 Mini sentences
- 2 From two words to three
- 3 Telegraphic speech
- 4 Rules about sticking parts of words together
- 5 Slot and frames
- 6 Online databases of child language
- 7 Complex sentences
- 8 This session’s quiz
- 9 Summary of Session 5
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Session 5 practice quiz
- Session6Session 6: The shape of development
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Language acquisition is in full swing now with new words acquired on an hour-by-hour basis, with utterances getting longer and more complex as children want to communicate more complex ideas. In response, adults talk with children in more complex ways which further accelerates their earning. Morphology is being used flexibly, the phonology of children’s speech is sounding ever more adult-like, and the communicative functions of different constructions are being refined with every use. As ...
- 1 Two steps forward, one step back
- 2 Creativity and conformity
- 3 Speech errors
- 4 Phonological errors
- 5 Caregivers’ role in modelling language use
- 6 Overcoming errors
- 6 If grammar is the solution, what is the problem?
- 7 This session’s quiz
- 8 Summary of Session 6
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Session 6 practice quiz
- Session7Session 7: The rules of conversation and how to break them
- Current section:
  Introduction
  We have come a long way from where we began the language learning journey. Children have learned what the sounds are in their language, how to share attention with others, read their communicative intentions, and how to speak and gesture. They have learned where the words are, what they mean, and what combinations of words are conventional. Now they need to take all they have learned and apply it to the next set of challenges.In this session you will consider some of the pragmatic aspects of...
- 1 Conversational rules of thumb
- 2 Irony
- 3 Lying
- 4 Common ground and information structure
- 5 Relevance
- 6 Metaphors
- 7 Stories
- 8 This session’s quiz
- 9 Summary of Session 7
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Session 7 practice quiz
- Session8Session 8: Reflections on language acquisition
- Current section:
  Introduction
  You have reached the end of your journey, following children from when they were in the womb, to stringing their first words together, to holding conversations and telling stories. Learning language is a remarkable skill that we carry with us for the rest of our lives and is part of the normal development of only one in 8.7 million species. It gives children the power to express their immediate desires, share their regrets of the past and their plans for the future. Over the course of ...
- 1 Complexity
- 2 Human nature
- 3 Diversity
- 4 The big picture of development
- 5 This session’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Session 8
- 7 End-of-course summary
- Where next?
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session 8 compulsory badge quiz

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