Wordless picture books or silent books present a story with illustrations only. The reader's task is to discover the connections between the illustrations, the events that unfold as the reader flips through the picture book. He has to pay attention to the meaning conveyed by the colours, the frame, the perspective and the composition (Haramija, 2013). Through my thesis research I will examine how often textless picture books are used in kindergartens, as they have a very positive impact on children's language development and imagination.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, I will briefly introduce different picture books, and in more detail I will present picture books without text by both Slovenian and foreign authors. I will also present the development of children's speech and the recommended milestones in storytelling according to the age of the children.
In the empirical part, I will present the results of my research. It was carried out in two parts. In the first part of the research I analysed children's narratives around the picture book The Bee and Me. The study involved 21 children aged 4-5 years. I audio-recorded their narrations. In the second part of the research, I carried out a survey among kindergarten teachers to find out to what extent picture books without text are used in Slovenian kindergartens.
My research aimed to find out how coherent the narratives of 4-5 year old children are when they are shown a wordless picture book The Bee and Me. I also want to encourage teachers to use non-text picture books more often in their work in Slovenian kindergartens.
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