Children with expressive language disorder have difficulty conveying or expressing information in speech, writing, sign language or gesture.

Some children are late in reaching typical language milestones in the first three years, but eventually catch up to their peers. These children are commonly referred to as ‘late-talkers’. Children who continue to have difficulty , will have difficulties combining words to form accurate phrases and sentences. For example, a child may not use the correct form of the verb tense (they might say ‘I goed’ when they mean ‘I went’) or they might omit important grammatical words (they might say ‘I going’ when they mean ‘I am going’).

They typically produce much shorter phrases and sentences than other children of the same age, and their vocabulary (the number of words they know and use) is smaller and more basic.