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Health & Fitness

Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders in Children

This article describes Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders in children and provides several examples of skills in each area that may be difficult for a child with an impairment in those areas.

Written By: Elissa Murnick M.S. CCC-SLP Certified Speech Language Pathologist, Director Murnick Speech & Language Associates

Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders can negatively impact a child’s social and academic performance. A Receptive Language Disorder involves an impairment in a child’s ability to process, comprehend, retain, or integrate spoken language. Receptive language disorders are often observed as difficulties with understanding what is being said to them. Children need to understand language before they can use language effectively. In most cases, the child with a Receptive Language Disorder also has a co-existing Expressive Language Disorder. An Expressive Language Disorder is the difficulty using spoken language and the inability to put words together to express thoughts cohesively.

An Expressive or Receptive Language Disorder can be diagnosed by a Certified, Licensed Speech Language Pathologist using a combination of descriptive/informal measures such as checklists, observations and a language sample analysis as well as standardized assessments such as the Preschool Language Scale-5th Edition (PLS-5) or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4th Edition (CELF-4) which will provide a standard score to compare the child’s expressive and receptive language skills to other children the same age nationwide. Below are characteristics of children with Receptive and Expressive Language Disorders.

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Children with Expressive Language Disorders may have difficulty in the following areas:

  • Formulating grammatically correct sentences (i.e. using the correct verb tense, pronouns, noun-verb agreement, plural nouns, articles, etc.)
  • Producing sentences of appropriate length and complexity
  • Using adjectives or providing detailed descriptions to properly describe objects or pictures.
  • Using prepositions to describe the location of an object
  • Naming words or pictures and acquiring new vocabulary words  
  • Making comparisons between two objects
  • Formulating sentences in the appropriate word order
  • Using verbal problem solving skills
  • Retelling stories or creating verbal narratives
  • Categorization or classification of pictures or objects

For more examples of Expressive Language difficulties, please visit expressive and receptive language disorders in children on my website.

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Children with Receptive Language Disorders may have difficulty in the following areas:

  • Answering Wh-questions  (i.e. “Who, what, where, when, why, how questions”)
  • Recalling important details after listening to a sentence, paragraph or story
  • Identifying the main idea from a spoken paragraph
  • Following multi-step directions presented verbally
  • Repeating sentences of increasing length and complexity

 For more examples of Receptive Language difficulties, please visit expressive and receptive language disorders in children on my website

 Elissa Murnick is a licensed, certified Speech Language Pathologist and the owner of Murnick Speech & Language Associates in Fairfield, CT. She has worked for almost 15 years with children of all ages with a wide range of Speech and Language disorders in a public and private school setting as well as private practice. For more information about scheduling an evaluation visit Murnick Speech & Language Associates on the web at www.murnickspeechandlanguage.com.

 

 

 

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