| E.Y. Merkushova |
PERSONAL APPROACH TO SPEECH DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
|
| RUDN, Moscow, Russia |
Forming communicative competence in children is one of the main tasks of modern
school. Communicative competence is a necessary prerequisite of a modern person’s
existence in a social environment, his efficient interaction with people,
ability to perceive and critically comprehend a great amount of information.
But unfortunately, the number of schoolchildren experiencing difficulty
in mastering different aspects of speech is constantly increasing. A reasonable
number of researches have so far been devoted to the problem of forming learners’
communicative abilities. Many researchers of this problem have also repeatedly
noted the connection between the learning of the native speech and the child’s
personality’s development. Russian psycholinguistics for example, studies
the theoretical problems of linguistic development of a person, concentrating
on stages and mechanisms of forming human personality as the subject of speech
activity. However only recently methods and ways of speech development have
become the subject of research, which might be important considering a process
of personal development. In our opinion the study of speech development should
be conducted with account of such character traits as sociability, initiative,
self-discipline and self-confidence. We suppose that these features greatly
influence a person’s language behavior, since they are strongly
dependant on the degree of development of the person’s communicative competence.
Russian psychologists have accumulated data about the connection between speech
(language behavior) and various personality traits. Thus S.S.Dashkova ascertained
the interrelation between general capacity of an utterance and such personality
traits as reticence, anxiety, discretion, adherence to one’s principle
and imperiousness and so on. L.A. Kharaeva, T.N. Kalentieva researched how extroversion/
introversion is expressed, M. Smirnova has studied externality and internality,
N.A. Miroshkina studied type of self-regulation, E.Yu. Chebotaryova studied
connection between type of language behavior in the native language and way
of foreign language learning with peculiarities of sociability (commutability),
S.V. Elgina studied connection between intellectual personality traits and speech
characteristics. N.A. Fomina studied how sociability, perseverance, initiative
are expressed in the text, these personality traits are basic ones, being characteristic
of the person’s integral essence through such speech characterizing variables
as activity, direction and self-regulation. I.V. Chivilyova studied how personal
activity is expressed in speech in communicative, behavioral, cognitive spheres
through connection of speech characteristics with sociability, initiative and
curiosity. Many authors (A. Salter, V.G.Romek, V.A. Labunskaya) have studied
self-assurance revealing connection of this personality trait with peculiar
individual speech characteristics. It is found that a confident person
speaks rather loudly, can make a pause, often uses the pronoun “I”,
clearly, openly and exactly expresses emotions, thoughts, wishes and requests
in his speech, often looks in the eye of the interlocutor, seldom interrupts
them, seldom uses insults and reproaches. Thus we think that development of
psychomotor and intellectual abilities, speech habits and certain personality
traits (such as self-assurance and sociability) make a single whole, providing
success in development of communicative competence. Therefore it is necessary
to work out methods of speech development dealing not only with the work on
conventional issues of speech development but also working on the development
of the basic personality traits.
