Expressive Language
Expressive Language
Expressive language or language ‘output’ refers to the use of language and the ability to communicate and interact. These skills involve using words to express our thoughts and ideas, our wants and needs and develop our language in writing as well as engaging in articulating sounds and social interactions with others. This is so that we can convey messages to others.
Our expressive language skills enable us to formulate thoughts by retrieving appropriate vocabulary from a store of words in the memory, recalling speech sound patterns and
then mentally constructing the sentence according to grammatical rules. We are then required to remember the constraints of conversational etiquette, recall what has been spoken and what needs to be said in response.
Using expressive language to construct meaningful sentences and stories facilitates us to retell a narrative orally or through writing and to respond to questions about what has been heard or read.
When to be concerned
Child is unable to express feelings and thoughts, even when talking about things of
interest.
Child is unable to recall specific vocabulary – known as word finding difficulties.
Child is unable to learn new words due to a limited vocabulary store.
Child frequently omits auxiliary words such as the/is. Deleting word endings is also common such as –ing, -ed.
Child shows below age-appropriate
understanding and use of regular and irregular past tense words such as wented.
Child has poor narrative skills, unable to construct sentences, use connectives and sequence events.
Child’s thoughts and ideas are muddled.
What to do
Repeat the child’s dialogue back for clarification.
Model correct grammar but do not make the child say it correctly unless spontaneous.
Use sign/gesture to represent tenses. For example left hand in front means present, right hand behind means before now (past), right hand in front means after now (future).
Use stories with repetitive dialogue.
Use Shape coding™ to teach and reinforce correct grammar.
Pre- teach vocabulary.
Use mind maps and word maps to develop new vocabulary.
How to assess Expressive Language Difficulties
Observation checklists can be accessed through a number of online organisations such as The Communication Trust. School SENCos can provide more information on referring to SALT services.
Check out our RESOURCES page for more info