Speech development in children of senior preschool age

No child comes into the world talking. The ability to learn speech is a natural human property, inherent from birth. The native language of the “little man” becomes the one spoken by those closest to him. Significant adults for the child are parents or legal representatives.

Senior preschool age is a period of formation of new mental qualities and improvement of processes of cognitive activity. “Perestroika” is taking place: children comprehend information about themselves and analyze the world around them. New opportunities also open up for the baby’s speech.

The period of changes has not spared the preschool education system. The Federal State Educational Standard has made its contribution. The changes affected educational activities and the level of professionalism of teachers and educators. The Federal State Educational Standard identifies 5 educational areas, speech development is one of them.

Speech development of children in older preschool age

Speech development is a designation of stages and techniques in a complex associated with mastering the means of speech, which are characterized by the development of verbal thinking, communication and creativity skills.

Speech is a dynamic phenomenon. Language does not stand still, but adapts to conditions and realities. Children feel these innovations better than us. The preschool stage is determined by intensive speech development. The children are making a leap in expanding their vocabulary. The speech became concrete and meaningful. At older preschool age, a child’s vocabulary already reaches 3-4 thousand words. During this period, children develop a “sense of language.” The young “linguist” intuitively senses the language norm. The child provides comments on the actions. Says: what am I doing now?

The growing needs of a preschooler act as a motive for language acquisition. The speech regulation function develops, which helps control activity and behavior. All activities are related to speech. The preschooler has new tasks and his social circle among peers and adults expands. It is important for a child to be understood by his interlocutors. The “little man” listens to people’s speech and copies the phrases and phrases he likes.

Observations play a role in vocabulary acquisition. The ability to see and feel the beauty of nature is formed during walks in the fresh air. Let them want to talk about the color of the clouds or the shape of the leaves on the trees! In the process of observation, children's vocabulary expands, and sentences acquire complex structures. .

Features of speech development of older preschoolers

A child of 5-7 years old monitors the pronunciation features of his peers and some errors in his own speech, and masters the sound analysis of words. It is not immediately possible without errors: sibilants are not pronounced clearly, in complex words syllables are rearranged, the letter “P” is not pronounced. A kindergartener's number of simple, common and complex sentences increases. Errors occur when changing words by case, especially when forming nouns in the genitive plural (“no gloves”). Teachers guide children in the correct use of grammatical forms. To understand how nouns are formed, let’s introduce children to the concept of a word-formation pair; Let's tell you how, with the help of the same suffix, words are formed that indicate a person (work-worker, gardener-gardener) or an object (rain-raincoat).

At this age, the child retells fairy tales or short stories, and comes up with a plot based on a series of paintings. Children are able to identify a topic and arrange parts of a text sequentially. With the help of adults, he selects words with the same root. The children form and use comparative adjectives in speech (strong - stronger; bright - brighter). They correctly understand and use prepositions without errors. Having heard an unfamiliar word, preschoolers often change it into one that is known. Mistakes occur, this is due to the identity of the roots: robber-rake.

Some children do not know how to use intonation or monitor the speed and volume of speech. In the senior group of kindergarten, a new type of work is introduced: children are introduced to the verbal composition of a sentence. Working on the intonation and expressiveness of speech will also help: we teach children to express their attitude to what is happening with their voice (raising and lowering their voices, placing logical stresses).

Games and exercises to develop imagination in children

Dialogical speech is important for a child: he lives in society. Teachers are working to improve it. Here we include:

• Ability to listen and understand the interlocutor;
• Formulate questions;
• Build a replica based on the task at hand;
• Use the norms of speech etiquette (greetings, farewells).

Instill in children the ability to build a dialogue: ask, support, thank, answer, ask for forgiveness.
To do this, conversations are held on various topics that are related to life in the family and in kindergarten. The baby learns to listen to the interlocutor and ask questions. The skills that a child acquires during the construction of dialogic speech will also be useful in monologue. Parents often devote themselves to everyday work without reserve, so they do not pay due attention to the child’s speech development. The preschooler has a poor vocabulary.

Close cooperation between family and kindergarten is the path to correct speech and a rich vocabulary. It is important that you talk to your child at home: read books aloud, discuss the events of the day.

Speech development disorders and their prevention

Most often in older preschoolers these disorders manifest themselves in incorrect pronunciation. There are several types of violations:

• dyslalia - incorrectly pronounces individual sounds, which is quickly eliminated with the help of a speech therapist;
• dysarthria - articulation and voice formation are impaired, the help of a neurologist is needed;
• rhinolalia - incorrect pronunciation of sounds, the voice is monotonous, slurred, the help of an otolaryngologist is needed;
• motor alalia - children understand everything, but cannot speak coherently, incorrectly agree words by gender, number, case;
• sensory alalia - children do not understand the meaning of words addressed to them, they need the help of a neurologist, psychiatrist, speech therapist-defectologist;
• aphasia - a disorder due to neuroinfection or traumatic brain injury;
• reactive mutism - the child used to speak, but then abruptly stopped due to a neurological disease;
• stuttering - lack of fluency of speech, a 6-year-old child repeats syllables and sounds, speaks intermittently.

Another group is speech delay (SD) against the background of mental disorders (MD).

Prevention of disorders by a speech therapist

To prevent problems in a 7-year-old child, it is necessary to develop him from early childhood: talk to him, show him, name objects, read fairy tales, nursery rhymes, sing songs, develop fine motor skills.

The help of a speech therapist would be helpful. It helps the little patient develop articulatory and fine motor skills; cognitive processes, skills of analyzing what is heard.

Diagnosis of speech development in children of senior preschool age

In the preschool period, shortcomings in the child’s speech development become obvious. Delay in speech development negatively affects the baby’s behavior and activities. Disturbances in the child’s speech development are identified during diagnostic testing. Corrective work begins with diagnosis.

When examining a child, they analyze: the development of sound analysis, phonemic hearing, the composition and richness of the vocabulary, communication skills, and the grammatical structure of speech.

Diagnosis of children is carried out on the basis of diagnostic methods for examining different aspects of the speech of preschool children, recommended by O.S. Ushakova, E.A. Strebeleva, E.M. Strunina. Based on the diagnostic results, the levels of children's speech development are revealed: high, average, below average, low. Levels of formation reflect a set of universal educational actions that a kindergartener acquires after mastering the educational program. Diagnosis is carried out according to several criteria.

1. Vocabulary : richness of vocabulary; the ability to select words that denote the qualities of an object; understanding the characteristics and qualities of an object.
2. Sound culture of speech : auditory attention; the ability to distinguish vowels and consonants; the ability to characterize sounds in a word; the ability to combine sounds into groups.
3. Grammatical structure of speech : the ability to describe an object (a picture from a book or a toy); the ability to create a description without visualization, based on life experience; ability to write a story based on pictures; ability to retell according to a pattern.

Techniques for the development of coherent speech : speech patterns, questions, explanations, motivated assessment of children’s answers and actions, skit games.

The literature describes methods for studying the coherent speech of preschoolers. Children are given tasks at the reproductive and productive levels. In the first case, the preschooler is given a template to retell or repeat. In the second, we use a toy or a picture from a magazine. The child creates an independent statement. When teaching, it is permissible to use 2-4 toys: in stories about games and play actions, the coherence of children's statements increases. At the beginning of teaching storytelling, ready-made game situations are used, which are played out by an adult.

Analysis of preschool education and development programs allows us to determine the existing requirements for the development of speech of children of senior preschool age: correctly perceive and understand statements or messages addressed to children, differentiate and correctly pronounce phonemes, intonation, stress, separation using speech pauses, speak clearly; have sufficient vocabulary and grammatically correct speech; the ability to interact with another person; retell and discuss what you heard and saw; express your point of view.

At the same time, in the 80-90s of the twentieth century, new approaches to understanding the essence of speech development in older preschoolers and younger schoolchildren were determined - from the position of the theory of speech activity (works by A.A. Leontyev, I.A. Zimnyaya, N.I. Zhinkin , T.A. Ladyzhenskaya, N.A. Plenkina, V.I. Kapinos, A.Yu. Kupalova, M.R. Lvova, M.S. Soloveichik). First, psychologists, then teachers, came to the conclusion that speech is also a unique human activity, and the very content of this activity, its features, began to be defined based on the concepts of “speech” and “language”.

Speech development involves teaching children speech, which is possible only in the conditions of organized educational speech activity.

Speech activity is considered by us as a communicative process that is carried out during communication, and therefore presupposes the presence of partners, i.e. the one who creates speech (speaks, writes), and the one who receives it (listens, reads).

“Speech activity... is a process of active, purposeful, language-mediated and situation-conditioned communication of receiving or issuing a speech message in the interaction of people with each other (with each other).” [1]

Children enter into certain relationships with other people, and therefore they need to understand the speech statements of others as accurately as possible, and be able to correctly express their impressions, experiences, intentions and thoughts in speech; possess verbal communication skills, have a sufficient level of speech (verbal) thinking.

A child’s mastery of his native language in the process of pedagogically organized speech development, limited by the needs of the child’s communication with the people around him, does not correspond to the child’s potential capabilities either in mastering linguistic reality as a special object of cognition, or in the development and improvement of speech itself.

The child’s entry into such educational and cognitive activities, in accordance with the theory of A.N. Leontiev, is ensured by the very structure of the activity: “Every activity has a ring structure: initial afferentation – effector processes that implement contacts with the objective environment – ​​correction and enrichment with the help of feedback of the initial afferent image.” [3]

Like any other activity, speech activity has an object (thought) and structure. “In any activity, the same structural components can be identified. It has four stages: a) the stage of orientation in the conditions of activity; b) the stage of developing a plan in accordance with the results of the orientation; c) stage of implementation (implementation) of this plan; d) control stage.” [3]

Let's consider a schematic representation of the structure of any human activity, proposed by A.N. Leontyev:

where a need is understood as an experienced need, a motive as an incentive to activity, a goal as a consciously projected image, an action as a unit of activity, a task as a goal of activity given in certain conditions, an operation as a way of carrying out an action.

Let’s correlate these concepts with the content of speech activity:

Subject – thought (expressed or perceived).

Need – desire for communication (communicative need).

Motive is an opportunity through communication (with a person, a book, etc.) to understand, learn, communicate, express, prove, etc. (cognitive interest, personal motive).

The goal is the projected result (the interlocutor’s reaction, finding an answer, knowing the information, understanding the text, etc.).

Action - speaking, reading, writing, listening, when language is used as a means of speech activity.

A task is a product of activity (sentence, text, conclusion, etc.).

Operation – a method of action (selection of content for expression, use of linguistic means to express this content, etc.).

The concept of types of speech activity belongs to the famous linguist and teacher L.V. Shcherbe and is considered by us both methodological and psychological. Usually there are four main types of speech activity: reading, listening (listening) - receptive types of speech activity; oral speech (speaking) and writing, which are called productive types.

The concept of types of speech activity in the methodology allows you to more clearly imagine the psychological patterns of the formation of relevant skills and abilities: methodological techniques, types of exercises, etc. must be correlated with the structure and formation of corresponding psychological mechanisms, always complex and multi-level.

This means that in practice, the need to ensure the formation of individual psychological operations and their complexes cannot but take into account the fact of the interaction of different types of speech activity , their mutual intertwining, especially when solving complex communication problems. It is hardly correct to deal completely separately and incoherently with preschoolers with reading, listening, and oral speech. It is better to build classes with preschoolers as integrated from the very beginning. [2]

The statement of L.S. is widely known. Vygotsky: “It is not thinking that thinks, it is man who thinks,” which can be continued: the hand does not write, the tongue does not speak, the ear does not listen. It is especially important to take this into account in relation to teaching reading.

Let us note that the process of learning to read at the preschool stage is traditionally perceived as teaching a child to reproduce a printed word (text) aloud, and it is precisely at what age such learning can begin that, as a rule, there is debate. Reading as a type of speech activity is practically not considered in relation to preschoolers. The main research is related to the methodology of teaching children 3-6 years old to speak (oral coherent speech) in a sensitive period for this.

In addition, for some reason it is generally accepted that by teaching a child to read aloud, we ensure his ability to read in general. However, according to A.A. Leontyev, “learning to read aloud is not so much learning to read as learning oral speech and the development of the articulatory apparatus.” [3] Fully sharing the position of the scientist, we also note that in the process of listening to what adults read to preschoolers, the reader-listener engages three of the four spheres of the reader’s perception of the text: the emotional sphere, the sphere of imagination and reaction to the content of the text. Our research confirmed the initial assumption that readers aged 5-7 years practically do not involve the sphere of reaction to artistic form in the reading process.

Thus, the nature of older preschoolers’ perception of the text, which, as a rule, is read to them by an adult, suggests that children are more likely to be involved not so much in the listening process as in the reading process. The type of speech activity when the text is perceived by ear, and at the same time the inclusion of emotions, imagination and reaction to the content of what is read is ensured, we call reading-listening.

Of course, children need to be taught reading and listening, and we consider the age of an older preschooler as an extremely sensitive period for solving this problem. The child, most likely, will not be able to do what we did not specifically teach him. Many troubles in the future study of the school literature course are rooted precisely in the fact that we did not teach older preschoolers to read (perceive) a literary text as fiction.

In general, full-fledged training in various types of speech activity at the stage of preschool education is a condition for the successful future educational activity of a schoolchild and at the same time “it is a tool for his self-development, something that makes possible his self-education, socialization, his further cognitive, personal, artistic and value development.” [2]

Ways to improve the speech activity of older preschoolers and younger schoolchildren were suggested by M.S. Soloveitchik:

1. broadening their horizons, ensuring the renewal of children’s thoughts and feelings, potential subjects of their speech activity;
2. children’s awareness of the language system, the purpose of various language units;
3. developing the ability to choose language means taking into account the communication situation and correctly formulate one’s thoughts;
4. developing the ability to select content for expression and organize it in accordance with the plan;
5. understanding the significance of all elements of a “foreign” text, developing the ability to extract meaning from each element of the text.

So, today, preschool specialists are faced with the task of ensuring the full speech development of preschool children, revealing rather complex phenomena of a new language reality for them, cultivating interest in language and thereby increasing activity in its acquisition.

Based on the above, we can outline the main content of the work that ensures the development of speech activity of older preschoolers:

Literature: 1. Zimnyaya, I.A. Psychology of teaching a non-native language. / I.A. Winter. – M, 1989. – P. 133. 2. Leontiev, A.A. Language and speech activity in general and educational psychology: Selected articles. psychol. works / A.A. Leontyev. – M.: Publishing house of the Moscow Psychological and Social Institute; Voronezh: Publishing house NPO "MODEK", 2003. – 536 pp. 3. Leontyev, A.N. Consciousness, activity, personality./ A.N. Leontyev. – M.: Politizdat, 1977. – P.86.

Children of senior preschool age and speech creativity

The imagination of preschoolers differs from the imagination of adults. At this age, imagination is comparable to intellectual activity, which is aimed at changing the world around us. The baby “rises” above the situation and sees what is happening through the eyes of objects, fairy-tale characters and even phenomena.

Teaching creative storytelling is a difficult stage of work that forms a child’s coherent speech. Children learn to come up with a plot, course of events and denouement, describe the place and time of action, observe logical connections in the development of the plot, distinguish reality from fiction. Preschoolers imagine the characters' outfits, describe their character, facial features, and hairstyle. Provide your child with a field for creativity - endowing objects with magical powers, composing fairy tales, fantasizing, adapting a fictional character to life. The main characters of fairy tales are favorite toys and cartoon characters. A child easily compares himself with a fairy-tale character: girls dream of a dress like a princess, and boys dream of a cloak that gives magical powers.

When creating a fairy tale, the child independently makes a selection of events, drawing material from personal and literary experience. He also creates his own images of heroes, events, and draws a plot. With children of senior preschool age, they play out stories of a fairy-tale nature: “The Story of an Old Chest,” “The Adventures of Santa Claus in the Forest,” “My Favorite Cartoon.” The development of thinking has a positive effect on the development of the semantic side of a preschooler’s speech activity.

Such tasks develop imagination, improve vocabulary, and enrich the structure of speech. Science has proven that children’s understanding of the world is formed earlier than coherent speech. Often, during a retelling, the child strives to say more: as a result, he becomes silent, remembers, and selects words. Help your child translate words from passive to active vocabulary. To do this we use:

• Logic problems;
• Games for mastering gender categories;
• Games for the formation of figurative speech;
• Games for the development of personal business qualities;
• Games for the ability to find fables and true events in the text.

It is worth mentioning the acquaintance with children's literature and book culture. They don't read in the family, i.e. Children have no experience of family reading and active listening; the book is not valuable. The development of the child is carried out in a complete developmental environment. The natural environment is filled with sensory tools and play materials. In a group room, you can’t do without an audio and video library. Classes are held in a friendly environment.

Take into account one more methodological point - the speech activity of the teacher. At the same time, the teacher does not interfere with the child’s creativity, understands and accepts the child’s position. A preschooler teaches himself independently, relying on creativity and personal experience. Even a shy baby opens up.

At preschool age, children's speech is formed. During this period, speech requires attention from adults. Under its influence, views, consciousness, sense of will and character are formed. Cognitive processes are also improved with the help of speech. By the beginning of the first academic year at school, children have mastered the word-formation model of their native language, and the traditional norms of pronunciation of words are fixed in their heads.

Learning to write and read

Moms and dads strive for their child to learn to read and write as early as possible. But psychologists and neurologists do not recommend doing this. Firstly, the child must master new skills in a timely manner (and earlier does not always mean better), and secondly, children need to be taught using a special method. It is owned by kindergarten teachers and primary school teachers, but parents can make many mistakes and only harm their child.

Instead, focus on preparing to master new skills.

Learn sounds. Moms and dads often teach their children letters, but this is wrong. Words are built not on letters, but on sounds.

Train your articulation apparatus. This is the key to correct pronunciation.

Learn to write in block letters, not in capital letters. Schools use the continuous writing method. Other techniques will only do harm; the student will have to relearn, and this is much more difficult.

Get your little hand ready to write. Let him draw, cut out, hatch, paint, put together a mosaic, draw dots on checkered paper - this trains fine motor skills, muscles, and develops spatial orientation.

Let's talk separately about the sound-letter analysis of words. This is where preschoolers begin to be taught to read.

Learn to read step by step

Stage one - learning sounds.

1. Start by learning a group of sounds. Use a primer or alphabet - learn in the same sequence.
2. Tell us about vowels and consonants. How to pronounce them (drawn out, abruptly), how they differ.
3. Tell us about syllables. Show how you can make a syllable from two sounds. Talk about the difference between letters (they are written) and sounds (they are pronounced). Show examples, for example “ma”, “sha”, “ra”, “ma”.
4. It is correct to teach your child: “b”, “p”, “v”, and not the letters “be”, “pe”, “ve”. Otherwise, the daughter or son will read letter by letter: “Me - a - sha - a”, place “Ma-sha”. It will be more difficult and longer for him to learn to read by syllables, then by words. Complex words will even look like puzzles: “a - ve - te - o - be - y - es” instead of “av-to-bus” is much more difficult to perceive.

Stage two - read:

1. We learn to combine sounds into syllables. Task for the baby: pronounce the first sound in the word until he reads the second: “m-m-m-m-a-a”;
2. Finding syllables in a word. Assignment: ask your son or daughter to find certain combinations of letters in a word. Let him read them;
3. We make up new words. Ask your child to make up a few words from familiar syllables and read them;
4. Adding sounds. The baby adds one sound to familiar syllables, reads, composes new syllables, words;
5. Learning to read closed syllables. First, show the difference between an open (“ka”) and a closed (“an”) syllable.

If the preschooler has completed these stages successfully, you can complicate the task - move on to more complex words, and then to sentences.

Pay attention to the fact that the child puts the emphasis correctly and understands the meaning of the words read. If he doesn’t understand, explain. Practice in the form of a game.