NHS Scotland

Speech, language and communication

Giving children the best possible start in life
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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.

Home / Introduction / Expressive language (use) development guide

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

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