The teoretical aspects of preschool children’s awareness of speech as a psycholinguistic phenomenon

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the theoretical aspects overview of children’s speech awareness problem as a psycholinguistic phenomenon. Awareness as one of the important aspects of a child’s speech readiness for school has been studied by many foreign and domestic and scientists. It’s important to emphasize, that the basis of awareness is the generalization of their own mental processes, which leads to children’s mastery of the speech understanding process. One of the criteria of awareness is the coherence of internal and external, the coherence of thoughts, feelings and actions. Thus, psychologists and psycholinguists are well aware, that for a long period of time during the process of communicating with adults and peers, a preschool child focuses not on language awareness, but on a specific subject situation, that determines its understanding of words needed to communicate with adults and peers in everyday life. However, the very awareness of the language, its vocabulary (appropriately or inappropriately said words, phrases, sentences, etc.) is necessary for the child to further master the grammar of oral speech and elements of literacy and so on.
The problem of preschool children psycholinguistic development has been constantly studied around the world, but in Ukraine, this issue has been started to be the subject of scientific interests and investigations only by few scientists. The analysis of psychological-pedagogical and psycholinguistic literature shows that this problem is not sufficiently covered both in the theoretical aspect and in the pragmatic plan of its implementation. The author’s vision of the concept of “preschool child’s speech awareness” is presented in this article. Work on mastering and understanding of preschool speech as a qualitative perception and understanding of what the child has mastered in practice, child’s involvement in language and speech activities should be carried out not only taking into account age, but also the individuality of each child. The complexity of linguistic concepts, the diversity of opinions of scientists, summarizing them, students and practitioners need to give a clear idea of children’s awareness of speech as a psycholinguistic phenomenon must be taken into account. The problems of development and testing of a training program with adults, practices of preschool education, aimed at preparing parents and teachers to form speech awareness in preschool.