The ability to tell a story is a pragmatic language skill that develops very quickly in the preschool period. For a successful narration, it is necessary to observe and coordinate several laws and rules of speech and language at the same time. This can be troublesome for children whose speech and language development does not meet general milestones.
The master's thesis examines the characteristics of storytelling of children with speech and language disorders aged four to six years and compares them with the storytelling of children of the same age without speech and language disorders. The theoretical part describes what is the usual development of narrative abilities in the preschool period and what is the development of the language planes that storytelling involves. The characteristics of children with a speech and language disorder are described, what the current findings regarding their storytelling are and how the assessment of storytelling takes place within the framework of speech therapy diagnostics.
As part of the empirical work, the storytelling of a group of four to six-year-old children with a speech and language disorder was assessed employing the Storytelling Test: Little Glove. The results were compared with a group of children without the disorder. Children with a speech-language disorder achieved statistically significantly lower scores in terms of vocabulary, grammatical structure, and content structure of the story, as well as in most individual indicators of the story within these areas. The research provides insight into the pragmatic skills of children with speech and language problems and shows that storytelling assessment is an important part of speech therapy diagnostics. According to the results of the research, children with speech and language disorders need support both in expanding their vocabulary and in developing grammatical complexity and shaping the overall content of the story.
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