Use of Author’s Logotale in Correction of Connected Speech in Preschool Children

Abstract

Preschool childhood is an important stage in the life of a child accompanied by active development of connected speech, which is one of the main conditions for successful preparation for school. Preschoolers with general speech underdevelopment significantly lag behind their normally developing peers in mastering the skills of connected speech. The paper considers the theoretical prerequisites of using the author’s logotale as a means of correcting the abnormalities of connected speech in preschool children with general speech underdevelopment. Numerous studies show that children with general speech underdevelopment face difficulties in monologic speech, make numerous mistakes in the grammatical system of speech, have poor vocabulary, and the development of their mental processes and motor skills is disrupted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experience of using the author’s logotale as a means of forming connected speech in preschool children with general speech underdevelopment. The authors present practical developments from the corrective program developed on the basis of the author’s logotale. Based on the results of corrective and developmental classes on the author’s logotale, a control experiment was conducted, which showed an improvement in the quality of connected speech in children with general speech underdevelopment according to all its criteria (connectivity, logic, consistency, expressiveness, correctness). The game form of classes also contributed to the development of mental processes such as thinking, imagination, attention.

Keywords: Connected speech, general speech underdevelopment (GSU), fairy tale, logotale, monologic speech, retelling

Introduction

Preschool childhood is an important stage in the life of a child, which affects all its further development. This is a period of active development of speech: the vocabulary expands, the pronunciation of sounds becomes correct, connected speech develops. The development of connected speech, which is one of the main conditions for successful preparation for school, is especially important.

A peculiar diagnostic sign of a preschooler’s development is the level of development of his monologic speech. Monologic speech requires not only the formation of special motives and the need for monologic statements, but also the assimilation of syntactic means for building an expanded message, as well as the formation of various types of control and self-control. The need to comply with all the above conditions is noted in numerous works (Ilyashenko et al., 2019; Levina, 2013; Sokolova & Plisov, 2019; Ushakova, 2013). Preschoolers with general speech underdevelopment significantly lag behind their normally developing peers in mastering the skills of connected speech.

Problem Statement

Connected speech is a single semantic and structural whole, including interconnected and thematically combined, completed segments. Retelling The is considered the simplest type of coherent statement for preschoolers. Retelling is a meaningful reproduction of a literary model in oral speech.

The problem of study is to find new, more effective methods of working with children who have speech disorders that meet their psychological and individual characteristics.

Research Questions

The analysis of the following research issues forms the basis of this study: 1) What are the methods, techniques and means to overcome the abnormalities of connected monologic speech of preschoolers; 2) What are psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with general speech underdevelopment? 3) Is a logotale an effective developmental, corrective and psychotherapeutic tool in working with children with general speech underdevelopment?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experience of using the author’s logotale as a means of forming connected speech in preschool children with level III general speech underdevelopment.

Research Methods

The methods of theoretical analysis of the research problem include the analysis of scientific literature, synthesis and interpretation of analysis results, modeling.

The methods of empirical analysis of the research problem: experimentation, which includes an experiment with the subsequent analysis of the obtained data.

Findings

GSU is characterized as a systemic violation not only of the pronunciation, but also of the semantic side of speech. With normal hearing and primarily preserved intelligence, children suffer from the formation of sound production, vocabulary, grammatical system. The defect can manifest itself to various degrees, which caused Levina (2013) to distinguish three levels of speech development – from a complete lack of means of communication to an expanded phrasal speech that is characterized by phonetic-phonematic and lexico-grammatical abnormalities.

Methods, techniques and means of overcoming the abnormalities of coherent monologic speech are considered only in relation to children with level III and IV of speech development, since the mastery of connected speech is only possible if there is a certain level of vocabulary and grammatical structure of speech (Glukhov, 2012). Connected speech as a special complex form of communicative activity in children with GSU is not independently formed, and senior preschoolers with GSU require systematic corrective assistance of a speech therapist (Efimenkova, 2015). At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the psychological and pedagogical features of this category of children: emotional-volitional sphere, the depletion of their attention, the abnormalities of arbitrary memory, difficulties in memorizing the instructions and following them (Sorokoumova et al., 2019). Connected speech is a single semantic and structural whole, including interconnected and thematically combined, completed segments. Retelling is considered the simplest type of coherent statement for preschoolers. Retelling is a meaningful reproduction of a literary pattern in oral speech (Sulima, 2019).

Children with GSU have particular difficulties in programming the content of detailed statements and their language expression. Retelling is characterized by the violation of connectivity and sequence of presentation, semantic omissions, distortions, pronounced situationality and fragmentation. Children do not always fully understand the meaning of what they read, add extra episodes or memories from personal experience, and find it difficult to choose the necessary word. Retelling does not correspond to the content and structure of the original. Low level of used phrasal speech. Children with GSU face great difficulty performing a creative retelling. Often the creative task is replaced by retelling of a familiar text. The detailed semantic statements of children with general speech underdevelopment are characterized by the lack of clarity, sequence of presentation, fragmentary, emphasis on external, superficial impressions, and not on the causal relationship of the actors. Retelling-description for children is hardly possible. They are usually limited to listing individual items and parts thereof. Some children are only able to answer questions.

Considering psychophysiological features of senior preschool children with general speech underdevelopment, considering the leading type of activity of a preschool child the speech therapists choose those correctional and pedagogical forms and methods, which would create the atmosphere of success, confidence in opportunities where a child would not be afraid to make a mistake, and at the same time would gain the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities.

The search for new, more effective methods to work with children having speech disorders often makes teachers to use fairy tales. There are the following types of fairy tales:

• literary tales: folk tales based on history, wisdom of the people and author’s tales – myths, paroemias;
• psychotherapeutic tales that reveal the deep meaning of events, such tales are not always unambiguous, often do not have a happy ending, but are always insightful;
• psychocorrectional tales are created to mildly influence the behavior of a child, to “replace” an unfavorable style of behavior with more effective one;
• meditative tales created to accumulate positive figurative experience, relieve psychoemotional tension;
• didactic tales created by teachers for “packaging” the educational material, while abstract images (letters, sounds, etc.) are smothered, a fabulous image of the world in which they live arises. Didactic tales reveal the meaning and importance of certain knowledge (Zinkevich-Evstigneeva, 2016).

Speech-based tales are didactic and are considered a holistic pedagogical process that contributes to the development of all aspects of speech, fosters moral qualities, as well as activates mental processes. According to the researchers, the inclusion of logopedic tales in corrective and pedagogical activities solves various problems:

• corrective-pedagogic (education of kindness, humanity, excerpts, responsibility, self-sacrifice, patriotism);
• corrective-developing (development of cognitive processes, prosodic side of speech, ability to convey the image through facial expressions, gesture, movements).
• corrective-educational (development of phonematic hearing, work on articulation, automation, differentiation of sounds, their introduction into spontaneous speech, improvement of the ability to retell and tell fairy tales, to think about the continuation of fairy tales, to compose new tales.

Games and exercises of “fabulous activities” aimed at high motor activity, alternating activity and passivity increase the flexibility and mobility of nervous processes, develop motor skills and coordination of movements, relieve physical and mental tension, and increase the performance of children. Thus, the logotale is an effective developmental, corrective and psychotherapeutic tool that can be used with senior preschool children with GSU.

A scientific study aimed at identifying the importance of logotales in correcting communication speech disorders in senior preschoolers with level III GSU was carried out on the basis of the kindergarten No. 1 (Ilyinogorsk), No. 2 (Novosmolino, Nizhny Novgorod Region).

Prior to the beginning of the study, the ascertaining experiment was conducted covering children from logopedic groups and senior preschool groups with normal speech development. The diagnostic tasks to study the children’s connected speech were taken from techniques and a complex program (Glukhov, 2012; Vorobyova, 2016). The experimental tasks have been carried out for two weeks.

The results of tasks on all methods, which helped to draw conclusions on the level of connected speech development of preschoolers of control and experimental groups, were analyzed. Particular attention was paid to such criteria of connected speech as logic and consistency. The following tasks helped to identify the level of development of the sequence of connected speech: retelling a fairy tale, a story-description, a story on a series of pictures, a story on a topic, understanding the theme and structure of a text, transmitting the structure of a text, composing a fairy tale, a detailed retelling.

The experimental group completed tasks for the speech sequence by 37.5 %. The preschoolers with impaired speech development missed, rearranged words or events, indicated secondary details, repeated episodes, mixed different sequence rows, and also violated the sequence of complex subordinate relationships (temporal, qualitative, spatial). The preschoolers with standard speech development completed similar tasks by 74.37 %.

The following tasks helped to identify the level of development of the logic of connected speech: a story on thematic pictures, a story on a series of pictures, a story from personal experience, a story on a ready beginning, identifying violations of a text structure, understanding the main idea, understanding the ending, genre differences, writing a fairy tale, short retelling. The experimental group completed the tasks on the logic of speech by 38.2 %. The preschoolers with GSU noted violations in the logical connection between statements and parts of the story, incorrect conclusions. The preschoolers of the control group completed similar tasks by 76.1 %. The correctness, expressiveness, connectivity of speech was also lower in children with GSU.

The corrective program is based on the author’s logotale, which consists of nine chapters and is intended for senior preschool children.

The heroes of the logotale are children of the same age as the children from the speech therapy group that travel around the country, that is why they are very close and understandable to them. The logotale traces the theme of morality and certainly solves the problems of patriotic education of preschoolers. The program on the author’s logotale contributes not only to correcting the speech of children, but also to the development of all mental processes (attention, thinking, imagination, memory, feeling, perception), which is very important for preschoolers with GSU.

Much attention is paid to the correction of disorders of connectivity, logic and sequence of connected speech. Children take an active part in picture up a plan for retelling a text of the logotale. The task of determining the sequence of events of the logotale using a mnemotable is particularly interesting. The mnemotable is compiled from a series of picture. A speech therapist offers such games as “Find a mistake”, “Pictures play hide and seek”, which are aimed at correcting violations of logic and the sequence of connected speech, contribute to the development of attention and memory. The exercise “Pictures play hide and seek”, aimed at correcting violations of logic, is given in different versions. The speech therapist removes the pictures of the beginning, middle or ending of the logotale and children are asked to reproduce the missing part of the text.

After collective compilation of the mnemotable according to the logotale and retelling the text, the speech therapist gives creative tasks, for example, “New picture”, when children are asked to come up with a different situation or meeting with other animals. It turns out a retelling with the elements of an essay. Similar tasks are given to children not right away, but as they familiarize and correct other chapters of the logotale.

The logotale consists of nine chapters, each of which is devoted to a certain topic. The chapters of the logotale are devoted to different natural zones of the country. There are three classes for each topic. The first week of the month covers the upcoming topic. Children together with a teacher are studying illustrations and get acquainted with the chapter of the logotale. Preliminary work helps to set up children on a certain theme of the logotale.

The first lesson is aimed at improving the grammatical system of speech, activating the dictionary of children on a lexical topic, expanding and systematizing their knowledge. Respiratory, finger, visual, articulation gymnastics correspond to the theme and contribute to the development of general, small, articulation motor skills, develop speech breathing, visual attention.

At the second corrective and developmental lesson, the first chapter of the logotale is read to children and a conversation is held on its content. Questions help to remember the content of the text. The speech therapist ensures that children do not answer questions with separate words, but with suggestions, thereby creating a competent construction of a statement. Before re-reading, children are informed on further retelling of the text. Reading the logotale again, the speech therapist puts schematic pictures corresponding the plot on a drawing easel. The retelling plan is later given according to the mnemotable. The logotale is retold by several children in turn, which gives confidence to children with lower level of speech development.

In the third lesson, the main goal is to improve the ability to logically and consistently retell the already familiar text. Riddle and finger gymnastics set children for the class. The main part of the corrective-developing lesson is devoted to a short retelling of the logotale using the mnemotable. At the first stage of corrective work, the speech therapist gives a sample of a short retelling of the text, and in the future this point can be excluded. Now a child already independently retells the entire text, having support in the form of the mnemotable.

Theatrical activities bring diversity to the work on correcting the speech deficiencies of children with GSU. Much attention is paid to speech expressiveness. The logotale can be staged completely or you can choose an episode, a dialogue at the request of children. Analyzing this lesson, the speech therapist reports on a further meeting with the logotale, motivating children to move to a new lexical topic. All subsequent corrective and developmental classes are built according to a single algorithm.

The results of the experiment showed that at the end of the program, the quality of retelling was noticeably improved. Mnemotables compiled according to all chapters of the logotale contribute to the development of logic, connectivity and sequence of connected speech of children. The improvement of speech expressiveness is influenced by systematic work to expand, enrich and activate the vocabulary. Correctly constructed sentences in retelling appear due to corrective work on the grammatical system of speech. Based on the results of corrective and developmental classes on the author’s logotale, a control experiment was conducted, which showed an improvement in the quality of connected speech in children with GSU according to all criteria (connectivity, logic, consistency, expressiveness, correctness). The game form of classes also contributed to the development of mental processes such as thinking, imagination, attention.

Conclusion

Well-developed connected speech is a key to successful schooling, so children with III and IV levels GSU need to correct it before entering school.

Children with III and IV levels GSU face difficulties in monologic speech, make numerous mistakes in the grammatical system of speech, have poor vocabulary. The development of mental processes and motor skills is disrupted.

The speech therapy program based on the author’s logotale gave positive results in terms of correcting the connected speech of children with GSU according to all criteria – consistency, logic, connectivity, expressiveness and correctness.

References

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