How “Play” Can Affect Preschool Students in Language Acquisition

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Features of Speech Development of Preschool Children
Didactic Games
Types of Children’s Games
The Essence of Play
Foreign Languages
Grammatical Structure of Speech
Conclusion
References

Introduction

In the education and training system of preschool children, an important place is occupied by play – the leading type of activity of the preschool period, creating the most favorable conditions for the mental and personal development of the child. In the game, preschoolers, unbeknownst to themselves, acquire new knowledge, skills, and abilities, learn to carry out search actions, think and create. With the help of a didactic game, children develop speech: vocabulary is replenished and activated, correct sound pronunciation is formed, and coherent speech develops, so children learn to express their thoughts correctly.

Features of Speech Development of Preschool Children

Preschool age is a unique period of a child’s development, which has a peculiar logic and specificity; it is a unique world with its language, way of thinking, and actions. In the play, one should look for the key to the child’s cognition since this is the closest activity, organically corresponding to the child’s nature and the natural expression of their activity (Brodin & Renblad, 2019). All higher mental functions such as imagination, arbitrariness, imaginative, verbal and logical thinking, motivational and operational components, and spatial representations are formed in a child’s cognition of the surrounding world, including through play.

The children act with objects’ meanings, relying on their material substitutes – toys at the initial stages of the game, and then only on the word – name as a sign of the object, and actions become generalized actions accompanied by speech. When using speech games and exercises in the classroom, well-thought-out and properly organized work leads to the formation of correct and competent speech in preschool children (Brodin & Renblad, 2019). The play develops memory, thinking, attention, speech, independence, and the ability to acquire and apply knowledge independently, and forms curiosity, initiative, and creative imagination.

Didactic Games

Didactic play is a valuable means of educating mental activity; it activates mental processes and causes preschoolers a keen interest in the process of cognition. Many scientists note the critical role of educational games that allow the teacher to expand the practical experience of the children and consolidate his knowledge about the world around them (Gasim Qızı, 2020). Play helps to make any educational material fascinating, causes deep satisfaction in children, stimulates efficiency, and facilitates learning knowledge. Didactic games are a kind of play with rules specially created by adults to teach and educate children (Gasim Qızı, 2020). They aim to solve specific tasks in teaching children but at the same time manifest the educational and developmental influence of play activities.

The widespread use of didactic games in preschool educational institutions is explained by the fact that they must correspond to the strengths and capabilities of preschoolers. Therefore, learning in the form of a game is based on the desire of the child to enter an imaginary situation and act according to its laws. With the help of games, educational tasks are solved to form children’s mental activity skills and use the acquired knowledge in new situations (Gasim Qızı, 2020). In the play conditions, children remember cognitive material better than when they are offered simply to remember. The educational and developing value of teaching as a didactic game lies in its content and focus on solving the problems of moral education, not just speech.

Types of Children’s Games

One of the main tasks is to choose such variants of the game in order to arouse children’s interest in word games. In all classes and regime moments, the teacher must include speech games and entertaining exercises: phonetic, lexical, grammatical, word, and movement games. In order for children to show interest in a game again, it is essential to pay attention to how to finish the game. Travel games are designed to enhance the impression and draw children’s attention to what is nearby. They sharpen observation and make it easier to overcome difficulties. In these games, many ways of revealing cognitive content are combined with gaming activities: setting tasks, explaining ways to solve them, and step-by-step problem-solving.

Games are conversations where the central aspect is the immediacy of experiences, interest, and goodwill. Such a game makes demands on the activation of emotional and mental processes. It brings up the ability to listen to questions and answers, focus on the content, complement what has been said, to express judgments (Turko et al., 2022). Educational material for this type of game should be given in an optimal volume and be accessible and understandable to arouse children’s interest. The use of didactic games in the work of a teacher contributes to the development of children’s speech activity and improves the effectiveness of correctional work.

The Essence of Play

Communication of children with each other and adults during the game is one of the most critical conditions for enriching and activating preschoolers’ vocabulary. Quinn et al. (2018) article is devoted to the study of the dynamics of the development of functions and forms of speech in play activities during preschool age. The author has established that within the framework of the game as the leading activity of a preschooler. Thus, there is an intensive formation of all aspects of speech, including forms and functions of it (Quinn et al., 2018). The study recorded an increase in the speech activity of children in the role-playing game in connection with its development: the higher the level of development of the role-playing game; the more often and in more diverse forms children turn to speech means during the game.

The increase in children’s speech activity is associated with the development of the game activity itself and with the improvement of their experience of speech communication. Results of the experiment conducted by Deborah et al. (2019) have revealed the existence of a two-way relationship between the level of development of play activity and the degree of mastery of children’s speech means. Moreover, a certain measure of mastering speech is necessary to start the game, and its development leads to the play’s improvement. Therefore, an increase in the level of development of gaming behavior stimulates the acquisition of new speech-communication skills (Deborah et al., 2019). It was revealed that the creation of pedagogical conditions for forming a plot-role-playing game in children contributes to the enrichment of vocabulary, the development of the semantic side of speech, and initiative in the use of speech means.

The development of children’s speech is based on their mastery of phonetics, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary in their speech practice. At the same time, the peculiarities of the course of all mental processes, together with the nature of the impact of the environment that surrounds the child, leave an imprint on the development of speech (Quinn et al., 2018). Currently, due to the orientation towards the humanization of education, including preschool, technologies closest to the age characteristics of children and their needs are in demand. According to the research of psychologists, teachers, and physiologists, games meet the biological, spiritual, and social needs of a developing child’s personality since they are a more natural form of children’s life activity (Toub et al., 2018). Purposeful teaching of dialogic speech takes place in specially organized speech situations aimed at developing the skills of composing a dialogue in a speech situation. This is the development of the skills to negotiate during communication, question the interlocutor, enter into someone’s conversation, observe the rules of speech etiquette, express sympathy, convince, and prove a point of view.

Foreign Languages

Many parents, realizing the need to speak foreign languages, instill interest in children from an early age. Responding to the demand, many preschool educational institutions and various development centers today offer their services in this area. The relevance of the problem of teaching a foreign language in a preschool institution is justified by scientific data on the need to maximize the use of the sensitive period in children (Turko et al., 2022). Unique psycholinguistic characteristics characterize the age group under consideration, and it has a good language memory. It allows expanding the active vocabulary actively, intuitively assimilating grammatical phenomena and imitative speech abilities at the phonetic, lexical, grammatical, and stylistic levels (Turko et al., 2022). Psychologists and physiologists consider it natural to introduce early learning of foreign languages, explaining this by children’s natural predisposition to languages and their emotional readiness to master them.

In order to effectively solve this problem, various forms and methods are used in practical work with children to form mental operations, speech activity, and the desire to cognize the surrounding reality. A special place is occupied by the play, which introduces adults to the world, a way of cognition. The ability to rely on gaming activity provides natural motivation for speech in a foreign language, making even the most elementary statements interesting and meaningful (Turko et al., 2022). The more the children immerse themselves in the game atmosphere, following precise rules and improvising on the go, the more successful the training is. In didactic games, children not only develop speech activity, assimilation, and consolidation of lexical and grammatical material take place but also the development of mental processes: thinking, memory, voluntary attention, as well as essential personality qualities such as purposefulness and concentration.

Grammatical Structure of Speech

With normal speech development, the child learns the grammatical structure of speech independently by imitating the speech of adults in the process of communicating with them and in various speech practices. Grammar includes three main closely interrelated and interacting components: morphology, word formation, and syntax. Mastering them occurs gradually but for each child strictly in a particular sequence. The timely formation of the grammatical structure of the child’s language is the primary condition for their full-fledged speech and general mental development. Language and speech perform a leading function in the development of thinking and speech communication, in planning and organizing the child’s activities, in self-organization of behavior, and in the formation of social ties (Toub et al., 2018). They are the primary means of manifestation of the most critical mental processes – memory, perception, and emotions. Mastering the grammatical structure of the language is based on cognitive development, in connection with the development of subject actions, games, work, and other types of children’s activities mediated by the word in communication with adults and children.

The sources and factors of the development of the child’s language and its grammatical structure are diverse, and accordingly, the pedagogical conditions, means, and forms of pedagogical influence are diverse. The didactic game differs from game exercises in that the implementation of rules or guided and controlled game actions depends on the invention of the educator. Thus, any game becomes didactic if there are its main components: a didactic task, rules, and game actions. Therefore, the compiled and balanced range of didactic games allows maximum results at each stage, including developing the child’s speech (Toub et al., 2018). Moreover, children’s vocabulary is being replenished and activated, the grammatical structure of speech is developing, correct sound pronunciation is being formed, connected speech is developing, and the ability to express their thoughts correctly.

Conclusion

For a preschooler, the game is the main activity and a way of processing impressions received from the outside world. It is worth noting that the game is a genuine social practice of children, their real life in the society of peers. Therefore, the problem of using games for the purposes of versatile education and speech development of children is so relevant for preschool pedagogy. Performing the function of learning, the game serves as one of the primary means of developing children’s speech, as it helps to assimilate and consolidate knowledge. Didactic and board-printed games are used to solve all problems of speech development. They consolidate and refine the vocabulary, develop the skills of quickly choosing the most appropriate word, changing and forming words, exercising in composing coherent utterances and developing explanatory speech. Didactic games help to develop the ability to pronounce words correctly, easily learn grammatical norms, and prepare a child for school. A feature of didactic games is mainly used to achieve a narrow specific goal.

References

Brodin, J., & Renblad, K. (2019). Improvement of preschool children’s speech and language skills. Early Child Development and Care, 190(14), 2205–2213.

Deborah, R., Reni, P., & Sandra, A. (2019). Importance of play in the development of language and social skills – a case study on twins. International Journal of Health Sciences & Research, 9(4), 338–342.

Gasim Qızı, A. S. (2020). The role of the didactic games in enhancing cognitive activity at preschool children. Propósitos y Representaciones, 8(2), 1–8.

Quinn, S., Donnelly, S., & Kidd, E. (2018). The relationship between symbolic play and language acquisition: A meta-analytic review. Developmental Review, 49, 121–135.

Toub, T. S., Hassinger-Das, B., Nesbitt, K. T., Ilgaz, H., Weisberg, D. S., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Nicolopoulou, A., & Dickinson, D. K. (2018). The language of play: Developing preschool vocabulary through play following shared book-reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 45, 1–17.

Turko, O., Olender, T., Boyko, M., Petryshyna, O., & Rozhko-Pavlyshyn, T. (2022). Formation of preschoolers’ communicative competence in the conditions of inclusive education. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 13(1), 239–255.

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