Which of the following is an example of verbal expansion?

• A. Verbal expansion
• B. Recasting
• C. Modeling
• D. Shaping

Answer: (A)

Verbal expansion is when you take what a child says and add more language to complete the thought, giving a more full, grammatically correct version while keeping the child’s meaning. For example, if the child says “doggy run,” you respond with “The dog is running” or “The dog is running fast.” You’re adding tense, a subject-verb agreement, and extra words to model a richer sentence structure. This differs from recasting, which rephrases the child’s idea into a different but equivalent form; modeling, which simply provides correct language for the child to imitate, and shaping, which gradually guides you toward a target through successive approximations rather than immediate expansion of a single utterance.