Your preschooler has so much to tell you and so many words to use! Language development in children aged between three and four years includes a continually growing vocabulary.
Your child will also show that he understands the basic rules of grammar. And you’ll be able to understand almost all of what your child says to you.
Vocabulary and language development at 4-5 years
- connecting words – for example, ‘when’, ‘but’
- words that explain complicated emotions – for example, ‘confused’, ‘upset’, ‘delighted’
- words that explain things going on in her brain – for example, ‘don’t know’, ‘remember’
- words that explain where things are – for example, ‘between’, ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘top’.
Your child is also learning more and more adjectives that let him explain things better – for example, ‘empty’, ‘funny’.
In general, preschoolers understand many more words than they can use.
Sentences and grammar in language development
By five years, your child will begin to use many different sentence types. For example, he’ll be able to say both ‘The dog was chasing the cat’ and ‘The cat was chased by the dog’ to mean the same thing. Also at this age, your child will be able to use long sentences of up to nine words.
By five, your child will know all of the different word endings. For example, your child will start adding ‘er’ to the end of words, like ‘big’ to make ‘bigger’. She might still make some mistakes though – for example, ‘they wants to go’.
Your child will develop the ability to talk about things that have happened in the past or will happen in the future, rather than just things that are happening right now. He’ll get better at using past tense, irregular plurals – for example, ‘mice’ – and pronouns – for example, ‘him’, ‘his’, ‘her’.
Understanding and language development
Your child will start to understand figures of speech like ‘You’re pulling my leg’ and ‘He’s a couch potato’.
And your child will follow directions with more than two steps, even if the situation is a new one. For example, ‘Give your ticket to the man over there, and he’ll tear it, and then we can go to the movie’. But your child might do what he hears first and ignore words that tell him the order he should do things in. For example, he might ignore the word ‘before’ in the sentence ‘Before we go into the movies, give your ticket to the man’.
Pronunciation in language development
She might still have difficulty using some speech sounds – for example, saying ‘fing’ for ‘thing,’ ‘den’ for ‘then’ or ‘wing’ for ‘ring’. She might also occasionally still mispronounce some complex words like ‘ambulance’ and ‘spaghetti’, by missing sounds (‘amblance’).
Developing conversation and storytelling
But your child will have more appreciation of other people’s perspectives, so she might add more useful background information in conversation. For example, ‘I went to Max’s and we had cake and Max is from my preschool’.
Your child will be getting better at taking turns in conversations with a group of people. And he’ll start talking at the right volume for the situation. He might make requests more politely, using words like ‘can’, ‘would’ and ‘could’. His requests might also be less direct and obvious. For example, he might say, ‘That smells good!’ when he wants something.
And your child will begin to use language to tease and tell jokes.