Translator: Yura Ganjalyan
After a long consideration I finally decided to write about speech development. I don’t like to repeat what I have already said, but there will be sentences and ideas which I will have to say again, because they make my speech complete.
Human speech is in a certain stage of development at each age. When I was telling about the first grader’s speech, I had distinguished the topic “Conversation as a means of speech development”, but now when I am facing another stage of speech development, I will try to concentrate on my work done in the second year of instruction.
The second grader already has certain wordstock and can form his/her speech well or badly. Self-confidence helps to form speech comprehensively and at ease. Our aim is to inspire self-confidence in children. If a child isn’t afraid of making mistakes he/she speaks with confidence. To my mind the biggest assistant of speech development is the Media with its tools and facilities. Thanks to Media the subject matter becomes more comprehensive and attractive. Colorful and illustrated electronic reader, which has been created by the learners, substitutes the gloomy and boring text-book and makes reading more interesting. The fear of making a mistake while writing disappears when the learner corrects his/her own mistake with one click. Telling something is pleasant when instead of telling an incomprehensible text, you are telling about your friend, family, favorite toy or pet, fairy tale, in a word, about everything which is close to you.
The use of voice recorder and video camera gives an opportunity to listen to the recorded speech. While listening to recorded speech learners notice their own mistakes and try not to repeat the same mistakes.
A year ago, when we were just beginning to release the Fine Art School News, we were discussing what news to record. At first I myself suggested topics. In the course of time the learners began suggesting their own topics at the beginning of the week, and on Wednesday (our class is to release news on this day) we chose the most interesting topic with a lot of questions in it.
Now I can give the voice recorder to the learners who are in charge of the radio news for that day and take it back, after they have finished their work, being sure that will only montage the beginning, process and the end. Of course there are children who need my or their friends’ help, but that is also a matter of time, as I am sure that they will also overcome the “fear of speaking wrong” as not only telling news but also telling their own stories, wishes and tales foster becoming self-confident.
You can listen to our news in the “News-Լուրեր” category of our class blog.
In parallel with oral speech development we do not forget about the work fostering the written speech.
We do the following activities to develop written speech:
· Writing letters and answering letters which is also realized through e-mail. The learner can freely write an e-mail letter to the teacher being sure that he/she will get the answer to his/her question.
· Writing an opinion: it may be birthday congratulation, discussion of a text, or an impression on an educational trip.
In spite of all my efforts there are still some learners in my class who find it difficult to be self-confident while speaking. Each child develops according his/her own peculiarities.
I am sure that by the time write an article about speech development I will have overcome all the difficulties. Speech processing is a constant and consistent process, isn’t it?