Expressive language grows at a rapid rate during the school age years.
Yet with all the different skills we could be monitoring, it’s a challenge to focus on the heavy hitters that make a true difference in academic performance.
When it comes to expressive language and vocabulary, we know this area is massive. We also know that it’s difficult to tell if students really “know” words.
It’s also a challenge to find ways for our students to show us what they know. Many of our students with expressive language disorders may have the knowledge “in their head”, but aren’t able to organize their ideas in to coherent statements.
Sometimes students may “know” what a word means, but they don’t know how to explain it to us to prove it.
That’s why today, I’m going to talk about one key indicator of expressive language: our students’ ability to define words.
Word defining is a key indicator of language growth for several reasons.
First, we need to have the underlying linguistic knowledge to give a good definition. In other words, we need to know what the word means.
Second, we need to have the underlying metalinguistic knowledge to give a good definition. We need to know what sentence structure to use so that we successfully convey the right information about that word when we go to explain it.
This also has an element of perspective taking, because we need to think to ourselves, “How would I explain this word to a person who doesn’t know what it means?”
It’s often the case that students with expressive language difficulties struggle more due to this component rather than simply knowing what the word means (Marinellie & Johnson, 2002).
The metalinguistic competence required to define a word is closely tied to expressive language abilities.
The ability to give a good definition is also skill that impacts academic performance (Nippold, 2016).
For these reasons, I’ve devoted this entire article to discussing word definitions and how they improve through the school age years.
First let’s dispel an objection I often hear when it comes to addressing this in therapy; which is that teaching a student to define a word isn’t “functional”.
There’s a lot of talk about doing therapy and assessments in “functional” situations.
What we’re referring to when we use any of these terms are called “contextualized” situations; and of course it makes sense that we’d want children to use language skills in “real” functional contexts.
And while the general thought among many of the experts in the field is that observing language in “contextualized” situations is often more meaningful, there are some exceptions to the rule.
Word definitions are one of those exceptions.
Defining a word is a structured formal task, so it’s considered “decontextualized”.
However, because the ability to define a word requires that perfect blend of “linguistic” and “metalinguistic” skills all in one, it’s not only important for our students to succeed in school; it can also give us an eye-opening view of our students’ expressive language abilities; particularly when it comes to vocabulary.
If you’re having students memorize definitions or just copy them from a dictionary, then that may not be beneficial.
On the other hand, if you’re studying the meanings of words and the syntax used to explain them, you can actually increase your students’ metalinguistic competence.
Additionally, once you get this basic protocol down, you can start to find ways to keep this structured, yet make it more contextualized and teach strategies that both boost awareness and independent-word learning. That’s what I show you how to do in Language Therapy Advance Foundations.
If we’re going to work on this skill, we’ll want to know how it typically develops.
We know that word definitions increase in quality and quantity as we get older; that we’re better able to explain different types of word as we mature (e.g., nouns tend to be easier than verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and we improve our ability to define abstract words as we get older (Nippold, 1995; Nippold, 2016).
We also know that the “meta” component of using the correct sentence format is difficult for students with diagnosed expressive language issues (Marinellie & Johnson, 2002).
No shocking findings there; but we need more information.
I explained here in the discussion of morphology, children start to develop metalinguistic competence around 6-7 years old; which means they have the potential to reflect on the format of definitions. So it makes sense that most of the information about the developmental progression of word definitions starts at age 5 on up.
We’ll start with Kindergarten and move up from here (information that follows comes from Nippold, 1995 or Nippold, 2016; both of which cite multiple developmental studies on expressive language and word definitions).
Kindergarten
When children are 5-6 years old, they can usually state 1-2 features when describing nouns. The caveat is that these definitions are often vague, and don’t contain the key defining characteristics of the words they’re describing.
Many kids this age don’t include what’s known as an Aristotelian definition, which has the following syntactic structure: “An X is a Y that Z.”
This format is essential in the definitions of nouns because it helps to structure a definition in a way that provides the most relevant features of the object; which for nouns includes the category.
When children are 5, many of them haven’t developed the metalinguistic skills necessary to correcting use the Aristotelian format.
They may say things that are technically correct, but not the defining characteristics needed to fully explain the word’s meaning (like the category).
For example they may tell you, “It’s pink”, or “It plays in the mud,” for the word “pig.” But they may not be giving you ALL of the information that would be needed to explain the word to someone who’d never heard of a pig.
Grades 1 through 3
As metalinguistic competence grows, so does the ability to use categorical information and correct syntax in definitions; and this skill gradually emerges from ages 6-8.
I know I’m not giving you a lot here in this age range; but this alone is a key development because the metalinguistic ability to do this task enables kids to learn new words independently at a rapid rate.
Children are also able to define other types of words (e.g., verbs and adjectives) at these ages; but this skill tends to be more difficult than nouns. The difficulties usually stem from issues with syntactic structure rather than semantic information.
Grades 4 through 5
By grade 4 (ages 8-9), most children are able to consistently use the Aristotelian definition format for familiar, concrete nouns.
They may also be able to use this proper definition format for more technical and abstract nouns, but they’re much less consistent. Same goes defining verbs and adjectives; although these skills are all continuing to emerge.
By the time children reach 5th grade (around 10 years old); they’ve solidified their ability to use the Aristotelian definition format with not just the category; but also adding multiple features.
So for the word pig, they may be able to tell you “A pig is a type of farm animal that is pink and cools itself in the mud.”
With regards to other types of words such as verbs and adjectives, we see a similar pattern; with skills getting more accurate with age (and errors still more tied to syntax than semantics).
Grades 6 through 7
Between the ages of 10-12, ability to define abstract nouns also improves; although they may still have difficulty pinpointing the key defining features (like the category).
Growth with other types of words continues as well.
Grade 8 and beyond
Between ages 13-18, abstract definitions of nouns improve, and children also become much more consistent in their ability to define adjectives and verbs with correct syntactic structure.
By the time we hit young adulthood, ability to define all types of words with correct format; including more abstract terms; begins to solidify.
It’s important to note that regardless of where your students are in this stage of development, they are always emerging in these skills; and they need explicit instruction in definition format to master these skills that are essential to academic success.
This means that it’s beneficial to continually introduce definition formats to children early on in their academic careers to prepare them for the future, and to encourage them to read as much as possible because children who read more progress through these stages with greater ease than those who don’t.
I’ll willingly admit that I get STILL get stumped when my students ask me to define certain words; both with my ability explain them, as well as my ability to teach my students how to define them correctly.
In other words, don’t be stressed if your students aren’t perfect with this skill as you’re teaching it; and know that it will continue to build over time.
For a detailed description of these stages, I highly recommend checking out table 5.2 in Nippold’s text (2016, p. 109).
We’ll dive in to the next topic, the language of reading throughout the school years, in the next few articles. You can see all the articles in the series in this post here.
I teach my complete 5-component framework for language therapy that builds the vocabulary and syntactic skills kids need to support language comprehension in Language Therapy Advance Foundations.
The 5-component framework creates enough structure to allow you to develop a language therapy protocol aligned with research; while at the same time being flexible enough to accommodate for diverse student needs.
Learn more about how to become a member here.
References
Nippold, M. A. (2016). Later language development: School-age children, adolescents, and young adults
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