Ideas to Support Your Child’s Expressive Language

• Expand and extend on what your child says; add information to what your child has said to model new vocabulary and longer sentences

• Use corrective modeling- repeating what your child says, but using correct grammar and sentence order

• Use functional phrases to encourage your child to use simple sentences vs. single words (i.e. “I want ____.”)

• Use choices to model the vocabulary for your child (“Did you mean___ or __?”)

• Use open-ended questions to encourage your child to provide more information

• Clarify and restate your child’s language attempts when they are unclear

• Provide practice talking about routines and steps within familiar activities

• Encourage your child to provide personal narratives or recounts of their own experiences

• Provide verbal prompts to help your child sequence and organize their ideas (first, then, next, last)

• Read books with repetitive patterns to model language structures

• When reading, discuss key story elements (i.e. characters, setting, problem, action, solution and ending) to build narrative skills

• Use story structure questions to their understanding of stories (“Who are the characters?”, “What happened first?”)

• Prompt your child to ask questions to seek additional information; model these types of questions, i.e. “What does this do?”

• Prompt your child to ask for help when needed i.e. “I need help” instead of just doing things for your child first.

Resources: Early Language Development

Facilitation Techniques to Encourage Communication

How to Build Language and Literacy Through Powerful Conversations

Communication Temptations to Encourage Communication

Using Stories to Support Expressive Language – Google Slides