Expressive language

Question 1

What is expressive language?

Answer 1

broad term that describes how a person communicates their wants and needs

Question 2

What are some expressive language skills?

Answer 2

Facial expressions, gestures, intentionality, vocabulary, semantics (word/sentence meaning), morphology, and syntax (grammar rules).

Question 3

What are the possible impacts on a child’s academic performance?

Answer 3

Listening/concentration
• Reading and writing
• Organisational skills (getting to lessons; bringing
items needed)
• May not be able to access curriculum content
• Difficulty answering questions (verbal and written)
• May not ask for help
• Difficulty with exam questions
• May get into trouble

Question 4

What are the possible impacts on a child’s friendships/relationships

Answer 4

May lack confidence to initiate
• Friends may not understand them and tire of them
• May not be able to sort out difficulties verbally
• May not be able to join in with fast pace conversation or
banter
• May have pragmatic difficulties as part of language disorder –
• May interrupt or have poor turn-taking
• Make understand things literally/not get jokes

Question 5

What are the possible impacts on a child’s wellbeing and behaviour?

Answer 5

• Might isolate themselves/withdraw
• May have low confidence/low self-esteem
• May have behavioural difficulties
• May avoid talking in class or with new people

Question 6

What might the teacher’s notice?

Answer 6

Not following instructions
• Copying other children
• Literacy difficulties
• Falling behind with school work
• Using immature language
• Getting into trouble/avoiding lessons/playing the clown
• Difficulty with friendships
• Needing help but not asking for it
• Not enjoying school

Question 7

Who may have (developmental) expressive

language difficulties?

Answer 7

• Children/young people/adults with DLD
• Children/young people/adults with other
Language Disorders e.g. Language Disorder
associated with Down syndrome; Language
Disorder associated with ASD; Language Disorder
associated with hearing impairment
• Children with SLCN who may or may not ‘catch
up’ with peers

Question 8

What are some vocabulary development problems?

Answer 8

• May have limited or immature vocabulary – age norms
(Owens 2008) (Paul 2007)
• May use word for a restricted range of reasons e.g. only to
label rather than to request it
• Difficulty learning & retaining new vocabulary
• Reduced range of types of words (lexical categories)
• May have a limited range of verbs/lack of adjectives
• May sometimes have ‘fluent’ language but restricted content
• Increased use of general words e.g. ‘stuff’ ‘that’ ‘there’ ‘do’
• Word-finding problems - retrieval from lexical store
• May have poor concept development – difficulty making sense
of their world
• Affects access to National Curriculum

Question 9

What are some syntax development difficulties?

Answer 9

• Telegrammatic utterances
• Shorter utterances (Reduced Mean Length of Utterance)
• Simple sentence structure
• Limted range of utterance types
• Difficulties with word order
• Difficulties with verb acquisition impacts syntax and semantic
relations expressed in sentences

Question 10

What are some morphological development difficulties?

Answer 10

• Difficulty acquiring morphological markers
• Omission of plural markers e.g shoes
• Omission of possesive morphemes e.g. hers
• Omission of present progressive e.g. eating
• Omission of 3rd person marker e.g. she eats
• Omission of auxillaries e.g he is eating
• Omission of past tense marker e.g. walked
• Difficulty with irregular plurals or past tense e.g. sheep; ran
• Omission of conjunctions e.g. and, but
• Confusion of determiners e.g. ‘a’ ‘the’
• Confusion of prepositions e.g. in/on
• Confusion of singular and plural forms