Free NES Elementary Education Flashcards

Receptive language, the ability to understand words and directions, typically develops ahead of expressive language, the ability to produce them. A child can recognize far more words than she can say because comprehension needs only recognition and memory, while speech needs motor planning and retrieval as well. Seeing strong understanding with limited speech is therefore a common typical pattern, and a teacher or parent should keep talking and reading with rich vocabulary to feed the later growth in spoken language.