Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments (AEPA) Practice Exam 2026 - Free AEPA Practice Questions and Study Guide

By the age of four years, children usually develop speech skills that are around 85% intelligible to strangers. At this age, their vocabulary expands significantly, and they begin to use more complex sentence structures. Children around this age are better able to articulate sounds and words, making their speech more understandable to those who are not familiar with their speech patterns.

In comparison, three-year-olds typically demonstrate less intelligibility, with their speech often being more difficult for strangers to understand due to developmental factors. By age five, while speech clarity continues to improve and children may become nearly fully intelligible, the key milestone for the 85% intelligibility is generally recognized at age four. By six years, most children's speech is very clear, often surpassing the intelligibility threshold significantly, but the focus of the question is specifically on the age at which 85% intelligibility is noted.