The environment in which we live and grow up has a great influence on our lives. Children cannot choose their living environment, so it is even more important that it encourages the discovery and growth of their potential. Vocabulary reflects our personality, as we use it to express our thoughts, attitudes, and attitude towards the world. By expanding the range of vocabulary, our knowledge expands, which is a fundamental value of modern society. The key is for children to form as extensive a vocabulary as possible, but at the same time they must also be able to use it and achieve the set goals with its help. We improve our vocabulary throughout our lives, but it is still a crucial period in the early years of our lives. It is important for all areas of a child's activity - from cognitive to emotional and motorical. It is also a key factor in social development, because with its help one is included in society and tries to understand it. Children expand their vocabulary the fastest and most effectively by reading books. At first, they reach for picture books, which they are drawn to because of the illustrations. These are of great importance in storytelling, especially if it is a wordless picture book, as the entire story unfolds through illustrations. Children need a good example so that they can create a good and high-quality narrative text themselves. Important adults, as parents, grandparents, as well as adults from the school environment, teachers, and other pedagogical workers, must set an example for them. Big transitions accompany us in our lives, and one of them is the transition to elementary school, which can be a big deal for children. In the master's thesis, we investigated the importance of the environment (countryside/city) on the student's vocabulary when narrating with wordless picture books in the 1st grade of elementary school. 45 1st grade students, 22 from a rural school and 23 from a city school, were included in the research. With the help of a form compiled in advance, we got an insight into the student's vocabulary and found out what influence the environment has on it. The aim of the research was to find out what significance the place of schooling (city or countryside) has on vocabulary, independence and fluency when narrating a picture book without text.
The research showed that there are differences between rural and urban schools in the vocabulary of students in the 1st grade of primary school when narrating a wordless picture book. The results showed that in the rural school, students use more words in sentences, use more sentences in the narrative and use complex multi-sentence sentences more often than urban children. In the stories, city children speak more literary than rural children. Differences also occur between individual genders, at the rural school, boys are more independent, and at the city school, girls. With the knowledge gained from the obtained results and the literature, we want to motivate teachers, educators, and parents to upgrade their children's vocabulary and familiarize them with the importance of the environment, they are also a part of.
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