In my master's thesis I researched the child's verbalization and encouragement from different aspects and factors. The theoretical part consists of six basic chapters: Language and speech, Speech development of a preschool child, Factors that influence the child's speech development, The role of an adult in the child's speech development, Development of bilingualism in early childhood and Kindergarten and speech therapist. The listed chapters consist of several sub-chapters in which I focused on linguistic intelligence and relative language ability, levels of speech, factors influencing a child's speech development, the role of the educator and their communication, the characteristics of parallel language learning, the role of the speech therapist in kindergarten, etc. The following part is empirical, in which I discuss the research I conducted using an online questionnaire. I researched the preschool teachers' competence in the language field, their innovations, strategies and working methods used to encourage children's verbalization. I was interested in how professionals are usually trained, which language education seminars they have already taken part in, and what their opinion about the power of encouraging children's verbalization is. Using a descriptive scale, I tried to find out what importance the educators attached in promoting the child's verbalization. In the end I assessed the importance of the speech therapist involvement in the preschool period and his collaboration with the educator. In the research, I used a quantitative approach with a causal-non-experimental research method. The results of the research show that most of the interviewed teachers devote themselves individually to the child when necessary to promote verbalization, following the kindergarten curriculum. 7% of the surveyed educators believe that they are qualified above average in the language field, which they confirmed by participation in various language education courses, including most frequently highlighted lectures by Dr. Martina Ozbič, workshops in the framework of Gingo Talk, Ciciuhec project and the Small School of Speech and Language Therapy. The results of the research show that the interviewed educators mostly encourage verbalization through the method of conversation, listening, telling, describing, substantiating, demonstrating, reading and project work. When interpreting the listed factors including the child's verbalization, I found that the respondents placed the greatest importance on encouraging conversation and discussion, the child's healthy development, knowledge of the strategies encouraging verbalization, language activities, a positive learning environment in the classroom and the role of the educator. The least important role in encouraging child's verbalization was attributed to the role of homogeneous classes. I established that the interviewed professionals are aware of the importance of the speech therapist's role in preschool education, but unfortunately, the answers I obtained confirmed that the speech therapist is present in very few kindergartens. I hope that the findings of this master's thesis will help to raise the awareness of the importance of the educator's role in stimulating child's verbalization.
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