Speech and language are two very important fields of child's development. Speech is very important for the development of personality and for human socialisation. Speech serves as the means of communication. Through speech we express our thoughts, feelings, emotions, wishes, needs. The most visible and obvious progress of speech and language occurs in the pre-school period. The development of speech and language depends on several factors, which can be divided into internal and external factors.
The purpose of this survey is to analyse the viewpoints of headmasters, teachers, education professionals, speech therapists and teachers of the deaf on the impact of external factors on the speech development of pre-school children. The survey encompasses 50 headmasters, education professionals in kindergarten, speech therapists and teachers of the deaf. Participants to the survey filled in a copyright list of statements on external factors affecting the speech and language development of pre-school children. The question was whether different groups of experts will share the same opinion on how much importance for speech and language development of pre-school children they attach to various external factors and which external factors will be given greatest importance for the speech and language development of pre-school children by individual groups of experts. Education professionals, headmasters and speech therapists play a very important role in developing the speech of a pre-school child. The development of a child’s speech namely takes places within the framework of all the fields and contents included in the kindergarten curriculum.
The findings have shown that the viewpoints of all groups are highly unified. The evaluators attach greatest importance to the quality of family environment, followed by the impact of kindergarten and peers, while the impact of social and economic factors comes in last place. There are slight differences within individual groups of factors, however only two of them turn out to be statistically important. Statistically important differences in the viewpoints on what affects the speech and language development appeared with the factor “the number of children books in home environment” between the group of teachers working with children in the department of the 1st age bracket and speech therapists and teachers of the deaf, and with the factor “mother’s completed level of education” between the group of teachers working with children in the department of the 2nd age bracket and headmasters. The survey also showed that the groups of experts attach greatest importance to eight out of twenty external factors. These factors are: reading out books to children, frequency of oral interactions between mother and child, good oral (role) model at home, mother’s completed level of education, family structure (nuclear family, extended family…), number of family members, teacher’s stimulation in kindergarten (knows to listen to the child, knows to wait, compliment the child), interaction with peers (playing) in kindergarten.
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