Vecāku līdzdalība pirmsskolas vecuma bērnu vārdu krājuma paplašināšanā

Abstract

Parental involvement in the development of the vocabulary of preschool children will improve not only their success at school, but also their cognitive and emotional development. Children start to learn language from the moment they are born and this process depends on the continued involvement of the parents. The aim of the article is to define the extent of parental knowledge and opinions regarding the development of the vocabulary and the methods that could be used to improve it. The article is based on the results of a previous study that is a part of a national research programme (“Latviešu valoda”) which focuses on the development of Latvian language in preschool children. The study used parental surveys in order to gather their opinion on the importance of their involvement in the development of preschool children’s vocabulary. The data gathered from these surveys was analysed to present statistically significant results. The information gathered from the surveys could be used to analyse if there are any issues in the parental knowledge about vocabulary development and used by teachers and education specialists to support parents in a more informed way. One of the observed effects of the surveys was an increased parental attention to the speech and vocabulary of their children which was required in order to answer the questions. Similarly, the parents noticed that some activities and processes that are related to the language development did not previously receive as much of their attention as they thought they should give. Conversations, reading and singing were considered to be the most important tools of speech and language development by the surveyed parents. Alarmingly, approximately half of the parents considered the requirements for vocabulary development to be lower than what is currently considered to be standard with a large proportion of the parents significantly underestimating these requirements. Therefore, the authors believe that parents often fail to recognise issues with their child’s vocabulary, as they lack the knowledge to properly assess the development of speech and vocabulary. The results of the study suggest that the problem of parental implication in preschool children’s vocabulary should be analysed further and extended to consider the family’s socioeconomic context.