At this age we would typically expect children to:
- Use their speech sounds clearly.
- Start to follow more complex instructions.
- Understand how words are linked by their meaning .
- Understand that some words have multiple meanings, e.g. here/hear
- Ask and respond to how? and why? questions.
- Use a range of descriptive and emotion words.
- Use more complicated grammar and join sentences in different ways.
- Be able to describe their own experiences and sequence events in the right order.
- Have a better ability to repair conversations if they breakdown.
- Be less literal in their interpretation .
- Stick to a topic but happily change if prompted.
- Use and experiment with different styles of talking with different people.
- Change the style or politeness of their language to suit the situation and the person they are talking to, e.g. a friend in the street or their headteacher in the corridor.
- Be aware when someone doesn’t understand and try another way to get the message across.
- Negotiate with friends and others to resolve issues without relying on adults.
- Start to understand jokes based on double meanings.
