What is expressive speech and receptive speech?

Expressive language includes all the early sounds from crying, cooing, babbling to actual words your baby uses to communicate with you, and is the process where babies learn to speak and later use language through reading and writing. Receptive skill is developed by listening and learning the rules of language. Babies, like adults, develop language in a systematic way. In fact, learning language is two-fold: first she listens to the sounds she hears and then she gives it her own interpretation (receptive speech). The second step(expressive speech) involves her making her own sounds to communicate with you. Both aspects of your baby's communication i.e. receptive and expressive skills need focus when motivating your baby to speak. What has been observed is that babies understand more words than they can express. That is to say a baby's receptive language skills will always remain ahead of her expressive skills. Receptive language seems to be more advanced in babies than expressive language and largely because sending messages is more tedious than receiving them.