In the diploma work my points of interest were the conversations on read stories in nursery school and the differences regarding children’s age.
In the theoretical part I derived from the notion of communication ability as the ability of critical reading comprehension and the creation of appropriate, correct and efficient texts of different types. I also dealt with communication activities (listening, reading, speaking, writing) and the development of children’s communication skills in nursery schools. I gave special attention to conversation between the nursery school teachers (in later text: teachers) and the children.
In the empirical part I analysed 10 records of conversations about a read story between the teacher and the children of different age. Secondly, I handed teachers questionnaires, which helped me find out how teachers make sure that all children form part of the conversation, which are the undertaken measures if children do not cooperate, how children’s comprehension of the story is examined, what kind of language they use, which conversation differences appear concerning children’s age and whether teachers are aware of characteristics and deficiencies of their conversation management.
I realized that all conversations were conducted in the same manner i.e. teachers together with children sat in the morning circle, where the activity took place with the only difference being the position of chairs (semicircle in group 2-3 year olds, circle in group 5-6 year olds and two rows in group 3-4 year olds). All teachers used the book as means of easier summary of the story. There appeared differences in the activity regarding children’s age, but they were not as evident as I expected, for example: with younger children teachers used complete questions whereas with older children teachers did not finish their sentences. In the oldest group, teacher explained the meaning of words whereas in the younger groups word explanation did not occur. In addition, teachers are partly aware of the characteristics and deficiencies of their conversation management but several times their answers in the questionnaires do not concur with their work in the group.
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