Speech & Language Therapy
How children learn to build sentences
1-2 Years
Children of this age will begin joining 2 words together e.g., more juice, mummy work, eat banana.
Note: A child needs to learn around 50 words before they can start joining words.
2-3 Years
Children of this age progress to joining 3-4 words together in a sentence. At this age, it is common
for children to:
-
start to use past tense e.g. kicked, clapped.
begin to mark possession e.g. girl’s hat, dog’s tail.
use regular plurals e.g. cats, dogs, socks.
miss out function words such as ‘the’ and ‘is’.
3-4 Years
Children of this age are producing longer sentences by putting lots of words together and may use
joining words such as ‘and’ & ‘because’. They may also:
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use auxiliary verbs (is, was, has) i.e. “the man is eating”
use determiners e.g. “the man is kicking the ball”.
increasingly use past tense and 3rd person singular e.g. he drinks, she eats.
overgeneralise irregular verb endings e.g. “throwed” (instead of ‘threw’).
4-5 Years
Children of this age begin including more grammatical information in their sentences:
-
Link several words together and may use joining words such as ‘and’
Use grammatical words (e.g. is, was, has, the, a) i.e. “the man is eating” instead of “man
eating”.
Place verbs into different tenses e.g. he drinks, she eats. They may make mistakes with
irregular verbs such as saying ‘throwed’ instead of ‘threw’ or ‘runned’ instead of ‘ran’.
Use personal (e.g. he/she/they) and possessive (e.g. his/hers/theirs) pronouns
Ask lots of questions e.g. Why? What? Where?
5-7 Years
At this stage children can:
-
Use well formed sentences with more details
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Use some irregular past tense e.g. “I drank all my milk”, “She took my teddy” but may still
make some errors
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Start to use words: ‘if’, ‘because’, ‘so’, ‘could
-
Show that they can use language to reason and persuade e.g. “Can I go outside because it’s
stopped raining?”
7-9 Years
At this stage children can:
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Speech & Language Therapy
-
Ask lots of questions to find out specific information including ‘how’ and ‘why’ e.g. “How do we
know burglars can’t get in?”
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Use descriptive language to give more specific information in sentences e.g. “Suddenly, he saw a
huge hairy creature”
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Use more complicated grammar and different ways to join phrases to help explain or justify an
event e.g. “It was scary because even the man with the dog looked worried, so we decided to get
out of there”
9-11 years
At this stage children can:
- Ask a range of different questions e.g. Why? What? Where?
- Use a wide range of regular and unusual word endings, with few errors being made e.g.
Fought, fell, brought, geese, fish
- Use long and complex sentence structures and more complex joining words to make
language flow e.g. ‘Meanwhile’, ‘therefore’ or ‘yet’
- Use complex grammar and sentences effectively to communicate in different ways to clarify,
summarise, explain choices and plan
- Use language to reason and persuade
- Explain some rules of grammar and know when a sentence is not grammatically correct
- Sentences average about 7-10 words and are longer in stories than in conversation
11-14 Years
Children at this stage can:
-
Use a range of complex connectives in speech and writing e.g. ‘although’, ‘as well as’.
Average length of spoken sentences 7-11+ words
14+ Years
Children can:
- Use a wide range of connectives in speech and writing e.g. even though, however, provided
that, similarly
- Average length of spoken sentences 7-13+ words
©Copyright Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust July 2020. All Rights Reserved.