The term receptive language refers to a child’s ability to understand what he or she hears or reads.  Expressive language refers to a child’s ability to formulate thoughts, retrieve needed words from memory and organize those words into sentences for speech or writing.

 

Another way to look at language is to divide it into content(vocabulary), form (grammar or syntax) and use.  Content and form can be thought of as the basic foundation level language skills, whereas language use involves higher level skills where one “puts it all together” during social conversations and when telling or writing a story. These higher level language skills are also referred to as pragmatic language.