Language Development 4-5 Years

At this age, your child will begin to learn and use more:

• 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.

As part of her language development at this age, your child will speak in increasingly complex sentences by joining small sentences together. She’ll also use sentences in different ways.

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’.

By five, your child will understand and use words that explain when things happen, like ‘before’, ‘after’ and ‘next week’. She might still have trouble understanding complicated ideas like ‘at the same time’. She might start asking questions if she doesn’t understand an instruction.

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’.

By the age of 4½ years, almost every word your child says can be understood by strangers.

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’).

Your child will continue to improve his storytelling, although he might still give too much or not enough information. He might also have trouble telling things in order and making it clear who’s being spoken about. His story endings might not make sense or might seem sudden.

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.