Expressive Language Development Guide
Children start to use babbled sounds before moving on to using single words and then joining words together into short sentences.
Being able to use words and sentences lets children express their wants and needs and to share their thoughts and feelings.
1 Year
Uses 10 -20 single words
Uses lots of jargon/ nonsense speech
2 Years
Uses 50 words, including action words e.g. run, jump
Uses 2 words together e.g. ‘daddy car’
3-4 Years
Uses three-to-four-word sentences
Uses ‘small’ words like ‘the’ and ‘is’
4-5 Years
Can hold a simple conversation
Using 4000-5000 words
Uses longer, well-formed sentences and links sentences together with ‘and’ and ‘because’
Describes events that have happened
Able to retell short stories