What is Receptive Language and 8 Activities to help!

What is receptive language?

Receptive language is how we understand that language input we receive. Basically, receptive language is comprehension. Imagine if you lost your voice. You would still be able to understand when people talk to you, you just wouldn’t be able to verbally communicate your thoughts (which is “expressive language”).

Some children may have difficulty with receptive language, whether they have a receptive language delay or disorder. Some things that children with receptive language challenges might struggle with include:

• Identifying early vocabulary basic nouns, verbs, attributes, categories, and functions
• Answering wh- questions (who, what, when, where, why)
• Following directions
• Reading and story comprehension

Each of these areas can be broken down even further! For example, identifying vocabulary can be as simple as finding an object, but there is actually a lot more we can identify, even with simple vocabulary knowledge. We can find actions (verbs), attributes (big/small, colors, textures), categories (animals, foods, clothing), and functions (cut with, write with, eat). These all signify a deeper knowledge, understanding, and flexibility of language. Usually when we are focused on receptive language, a child can point to or touch the requested object, instead of saying it (because saying it is the expressive language part!)

Our receptive language skills are interrelated with other important abilities such as attention, memory, and hearing ability. We also want to make sure that we aren’t confusing a lack of motivation or disinterest in an activity with poor receptive language skills!

Keep in mind that it can be hard to evaluate receptive language in some populations, such as autistic children. Often times it is hard to evaluate receptive language without relying on expressive language. Autistic children follow their own language developmental process and generally have greater receptive language skills than they might demonstrate during an evaluation process. For these children and some other special populations, we need to presume competence when it comes to receptive language and focus on expressive language for now.

8 Ways to Promote Receptive Language

There are lots of ways to promote receptive language development, whether you are an SLP or a parent at home looking to help boost your child’s abilities (if you are a parent and haven’t reached out to a speech therapist, I highly recommend that you do if you have receptive language concerns!)

#1: Simplify the message!

Our first step should be to figure out how we can support the child and set them up for success. Honestly, right now the research tells us that there isn’t a lot we can do to improve attention and memory, so if these are factors affecting the child, the most important thing to do is set up supports to help them compensate for those struggles.

When it is important for a child to understand what we are saying, we should make sure to use simple language. If we are working on improving receptive language, we should speak at a slightly higher level of complexity than what we know that the child understands.

Catch yourself the next time you give out 4 or more directions in one breath. That can get overwhelming fast for our kids! Break directions into smaller pieces. Remember to strive for success and increase confidence!

#2: Provide visual support

Maybe the child is a visual learner and doesn’t do their best work from auditory input. Maybe they have attention difficulties or working memory challenges. Providing a visual support will give the child something to reference. People of all abilities rely on to-do lists, planners, and note-taking because we can’t remember it all! It’s ok to teach our kids how to use visuals to support their needs too.

A visual support could be an object, picture, gestures, or written list or schedule. This will depend on the child’s preference and reading level.

Remember, receptive language has to do with understanding the language input – and language input can come from writing and gestures too!

#3: Picture books!

Not that we needed any more reasons to love books! I love picture books (and wordless picture books!) for targeting receptive language skills. While you are reading or even just looking at the book, you can ask the child to find certain pictures on the page. You can do this by asking specifically “Where’s the dinosaur?” or “Touch the dinosaur” or whatever other objects you see in the book. The I Spy! book series is laid out for this specifically, but you really can use any book.

You can target verbs by saying “Who is jumping?” and pointing to or tapping a character who is jumping, or attributes by asking “Where’s the big one?” Target functions by asking “Which one is for cutting?” This activity is targeting both following a simple one step direction, as well as identifying objects, verbs, attributes, and categories.

#4: Puzzles

Just like with books, we can use fun, chunky puzzles to find certain animals, vehicles, or other objects. We can find them by name or by attribute.

#5: Simple Crafts

We can give simple 1, 2, or maybe even 3 step directions while working on easy crafts. If you’re looking for suggestions, I have weekly, themed ideas in my themed speech and language packets for fall, winter, spring, and summer.

#6: Play “Simon Says”

Be silly and have fun with following directions! It’s pretty simple to have a game of Simon Says and you can make it as easy or complicated as you like. Make sure your child gets a turn to be Simon too.

#7: Have a scavenger hunt

Scavenger hunts are all about receptive language. You can hunt for things based on their name, attribute, or category. This is a great way to get up and moving if your child benefits from some kinesthetic stimulation.

#8: My No Print Interactive Basic Receptive Language packet

 

While there are lots of fun, naturalistic ways to target receptive language skills, sometimes you need something quick and clean to get a baseline or to update progress. That’s why I created a super, super, fantastic no-print product targeting receptive language! It’s no print and interactive, so you can use it on your iPad (in iBooks) or on your computer. Just open and go! How easy is that?! And great for teletherapy or in person (no printing and laminating!)

Over 800+ 5-star reviewers love it for students of all ages (thanks to the real pictures, there are no cutesy, babyish/abstract clipart graphics here!), especially for to gather some quick data on strengths and needs in receptive language, identification, describing, and labelling!

This product targets a variety of receptive language skills including object identification, verb identification, and WH questions. Check out all six sections below:

 

When you open the product, you will be able to view instructions (see the first photo with the green border). The second page is the one shown above. There, you can click on any of those six boxes to be taken to that section.

Each page looks like the picture below:

Your student will answer each question by clicking on, or touching, the correct photo. When the touch the correct photo, the next question will appear. If you are using your iPad (and iBooks), when they touch the wrong answer, nothing will happen.

 

When your student answers the last question of each session correctly, they will be taken back to the home page, allowing you to select another section if you want! It’s super easy to use!

Below are some more example pages of each section. Note that the color of the border matches the subject area (e.g., red border = object identification, green border = function identification).

Every section of this no print receptive language packet contains 20 slides (20 questions) with picture choices, except for verb identification, which contains 15 slides (15 questions).

Every slide contains two picture answer choices, except in the WH Questions section. These slides contain three picture choices each and definitely get harder.

{thanks for reading}