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Child Development & Early Education vocabulary · Language and Communication

Expressive language

Meaning in child development & early education, with examples

nounCommon term

In child development & early education, expressive language means: A child's ability to use language to communicate, through words, sentences, gestures or signs, in order to ask for things, share ideas and describe events.

In Turkish: ifade edici dil, dili kullanma

How it is used

Used with receptive language in assessments, reports and referrals. Staff describe vocabulary, sentence length and grammar when they write about expressive language. Speech, the clear production of sounds, is assessed separately.

Example sentences

  1. Her expressive language has really taken off: she now uses three-word sentences.

  2. We are using signs to support his expressive language.

Common collocations

  • expressive language skills
  • expressive vocabulary
  • expressive language delay
  • two-word phrases
  • receptive languageA child's ability to understand language: following instructions, understanding words and questions, and making sense of what other people say.
  • language developmentThe process by which children learn to understand and use language, from crying and babbling to words, sentences and conversation.
  • babblingThe repeated speech-like sounds babies make before their first words, such as 'bababa' or 'dadada', usually starting in the second half of the first year.
  • stammeringA difference in the flow of speech in which a person repeats sounds or words, stretches sounds or gets stuck before a word, as in 'I w-w-want the ball'.

More terms: Language and Communication

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