My Master's thesis theoretical framework illustrates the influence of picture books on the speech development. It gives different speech definitions, factors affecting child speech development and various theories on speech development. A short description of child speech and language development stages and characteristics of child storytelling at different stages has been given. Picture books, that are one of the first works that children get to know, have to be of good quality. Aiming a good quality picture book, the author has to consider and include quality-based elements. In a picture book, the text and illustrations can make up different plots, that can be either complementary, or the same. In wordless picture books the reader himself creates the text, therefore the text can vary from reading to reading. The way of plot building depends on child's vocabulary, reading experience and his book list. Reading develops in stages, hence stages of reading development have been formed, each having its typical features. Thus child's plot forming ability depends mainly on the stage of his reading development stage.
The research part of my thesis includes three wordless picture books. Herewith I wanted to find out how repetitive reading influences the way of storytelling; at first in one picture book only and in the end considering all three picture books together. Since a wordless picture book requires of the child that he unaidedly makes up a story with the given illustrations, he has to look at the illustrations with understanding, interconnect them and include the details into the story. Research results show that, recurrent reading of one and the same picture book significantly improves the way of forming and telling the story. Nevertheless, considering all three books together, recurrent reading of a picture book did not essentially influence the storytelling
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