Language

What Is Language?

Language refers to the words we use and how we use them to share ideas and get what we want. Language includes:

• What words mean. Some words have more than one meaning. For example, “star” can be a bright object in the sky or someone famous.

• How to make new words. For example, we can say “friend,” “friendly,” or “unfriendly” and mean something different.

• How to put words together. For example, in English we say, “Peg walked to the new store” instead of “Peg walk store new.”

• What we should say at different times. For example, we might be polite and say, “Would you mind moving your foot?” But, if the person does not move, we may say, “Get off my foot!”

Receptive Language (Comprehension) - Receptive language is the ability to understand words and language. It involves gaining information and meaning from routine (e.g. we have finished our breakfast so next it is time to get dressed), visual information within the environment (e.g. mum holding her keys means that we are going to get the car, a green light means go), sounds and words (e.g. a siren means a fire engine is coming down the street, the word ball means a round bouncy thing we play with), concepts such as size, shape, colors and time, grammar (e.g. regular plurals: cat/s, regular past tense: fetch/ed) and written information (e.g. signs in the environment like “no climbing”, written stories).

Expressive Language (Use)- Expressive language is the use of words, sentences, gestures and writing to convey meaning and messages to others. Expressive language skills include being able to label objects in the environment, describe actions and events, put words together in sentences, use grammar correctly (e.g. “I had a drink” not “Me drinked”), retell a story, answer questions and write short story.

Pragmatic Language (Social Skills)- Pragmatic Language are the rules that we follow when we talk and interact with others. There are rules about when and how you should talk to people. We use facial expressions or gestures to share how we feel. We learn how to let someone know when we change the topic. Knowing and using these rules makes it easier to communicate.